CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY
If we look at a map, we shall see that the Allegheny river flows
southward from New York into western Pennsylvania. The Monongahela
river, rising among the rough highlands of West Virginia, sends its
waters toward the north, and the two great streams join to form the
Ohio, which flows on far to the southwest. All together they are like
wide-spreading branches of an apple tree uniting with the gnarled old
trunk.
In the great crotch of the tree Pittsburg is snugly placed. A narrow
point of flat land lies between the rivers just before they come
together to make the Ohio, and back of this point, to the east, rise
steep hills. Across the Allegheny and across the Monongahela the banks
rise sharply for several hundred feet, and there too, wherever the
slope is not too steep for houses to stand, tens of thousands of busy
people have their homes.
[Illustration: FIG. 44. OLD BLOCKHOUSE, PITTSBURG]
The rivers are crossed by many bridges and are full of boats. Up and
down for miles their banks are smoky and noisy with furnaces, and at
night the iron mills light up the valley with wonderful torches of
flame leaping into the black sky. If the great towns clustered within
an hour’s ride were counted in, Pittsburg would now have a million
people. Only a hundred years ago she was, like many other cities in
the New World, a humble village between two rivers. As early as 1730
white men journeyed here to trade with the Indians, who could come from
any part of the western country in their canoes. Washington stood here
November 24, 1753, and in his description of the place wrote, “I think
it extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute command of
both rivers.” Men were to need forts for a long time in that country,
and the one which was soon built on this site had a stirring history.
In 1758 it was recaptured from the French and named for England’s
prime minister, Pitt. Hence we have Pittsburgh, which is the old
spelling, but it is now common to drop the _h_, and write it Pittsburg.
The old blockhouse of brick, which is still standing, was built
in 1764. Washington came back to the spot in 1770, and found here
about twenty houses, used by men who were trading with the Indians.
Arthur Lee, in 1784, thought that the place would “never be very
considerable,” but he was not a good prophet. In 1816 it had become a
city and has been steadily gaining in importance since that time. Not
much more than fifty years later an historian of Pittsburg said that if
Mr. Lee could then come back, he would find a city bigger than the six
largest cities and towns in the Old Dominion.
The secret of Pittsburg’s success is in its location. Many years ago
it was called “the gate of the West,” and through it has gone much of
the trade between the East and the lands beyond the mountains. Even
from New York the pioneers came by land and water to the head of the
Ohio, an undertaking by no means easy in those days. A prominent man
in Pittsburg once contracted with the government to send provisions
to Oswego, and as he wished to make the long journey as profitable as
he could, he packed the provisions in strong barrels that would hold
salt. When these were emptied they were filled for the return trip
with Onondaga salt and carried by lake Ontario to the Niagara river
below the falls. They were then taken around the falls and across the
lake to Erie, up French creek, over the portage, and at length by boat
to Pittsburg. It was a roundabout way, but the enterprising dealer
sold salt in Pittsburg for half the price charged by the packers who
brought it by rough mountain roads from the East.
Improvements in methods of transportation caused an increase in
business activity. By the Pittsburg pike, by the canal with its Portage
Railway, and finally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, trade was coming
from Philadelphia. Not less promptly did the men of Baltimore and the
Virginians reach Pittsburg by the trail, the National Road, and the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Because Pittsburg stood at the head of the
Ohio it was a door to the whole Mississippi valley, and men and goods
quickly found their way to it. Once there a boat would take them over
thousands of miles of river, or to New Orleans and the open sea.
Henry Clay used to tell in Congress a good story about Pittsburg. He
said that a ship built at Pittsburg sailed down the river, through
the gulf, across the Atlantic, into the Mediterranean, and anchored
at Leghorn. The captain handed his papers to the officer of the
customhouse, who did not credit them. “Sir,” said he, “your papers are
forged; there is no such port as Pittsburg in the world; your vessel
must be confiscated.” Though the captain was frightened, he pulled out
a map and taught the Italian official a lesson in geography, making
him understand at last that one could sail a thousand miles up the
Mississippi and another thousand up the Ohio, and that there was such a
port as Pittsburg.
[Illustration: FIG. 45. PITTSBURG]
The first boats on the Ohio river were the light bark canoes of the red
men. These could sail in almost any water, but they were easily broken
and could carry only light loads. When white men began to throng the
river and wanted to carry their families, household furniture, tools,
grain, and all the produce of the land, they needed something larger
and stronger. At first they built barges, which were little more than
great boxes made water-tight. These they loaded and steered down the
stream as best they could. They did not expect to bring them back, for
such boats could not be pushed against the current. Hence the barge
builders at Pittsburg always had work, for a new one had to be provided
for each fresh cargo.
Later men began to make keel boats, in which they could not only go
downstream but could also, by poling, make a return voyage. These boats
were about fifty feet long and could carry twenty tons or more. Along
the sides were “running boards,” where the men went up and down with
their setting poles to drive the boat against the current. The space
between the running boards was covered over to form a kind of cabin.
It was not an easy task to pole one of these boats up a rapid, and the
life on the river was a life of toil.
During the last twenty years before 1800, or while Washington was
President, a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia took up traffic on the
Ohio. He sent dry goods and other merchandise overland to Pittsburg,
thence down the Ohio in a barge, and up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia in
Illinois, which was at that time an important town. Here the cargo was
exchanged for skins of bear, deer, buffalo, and other animals, to be
taken up the Ohio and sent from Pittsburg to Philadelphia.
It took time to trade in this way. A summer was needed to go down to
New Orleans and back again with a keel boat or a barge. When a boat
came up “with furs from St. Louis; cotton from Natchez; hemp, tobacco,
and saltpeter from Maysville; or sugar and cotton from New Orleans and
Natchez, it was a wonder to the many, and drew vast crowds to see and
rejoice over it.”
One of the river men. Captain Shreve, once took his boat from New
Orleans up to Louisville in twenty-five days. The people celebrated
this remarkable achievement and gave the captain a public dinner. No
doubt they made as much ado as we should now make if a ship should go
from New York to Liverpool in three days. They were quite right to make
a feast in honor of the occasion, for the time commonly allowed for the
journey had been three months.
The flatboat, which for years was used in river traffic, was about
forty feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet deep. It had a flat
bottom and was handled by means of three oars on each side. Two of
these were called sweeps, and were almost as long as the boat itself.
At the stern was a still longer steering oar. When the water rose in
the autumn these boats carried loads of produce and bore thousands of
families who were seeking homes farther west.
Old and young with their household treasures, which often included
the cow, sailed down in these rude house boats to some chosen spot in
the distant wilderness. It was in a boat like these that the tall and
awkward young man, Abraham Lincoln, made a voyage to New Orleans and
first saw something of the outside world.
Redstone was an old name for Brownsville, where the National Road
crossed the Monongahela, and many boats started from here in early
days. It is said that an old boatman was once hailed by a seeker after
information. “Where are you from?” was the first question. “Redstone,”
was the answer. “What is your lading?” “Millstones.” “What is your
captain’s name?” “Whetstone.” “Where are you bound?” “For Limestone.”
The interesting part of the story is that these answers were all true.
Large as the traffic was by the flatboats, it was greatly increased
when steamboats began to run on the rivers. No other craft could hope
to compete with these.
The boatmen owed a grudge to the steamboat, just as the pack-horse
men had hated the Conestoga wagon, for they saw that their trade was
lost, and it was hard to try to make a living in some other way. For
many years the great passenger boats reigned supreme on the rivers
of the West, but at last they in turn were forced to give way to the
railroads. Such boats still run on the Ohio and the Mississippi, but
men do not travel on them when they wish to go quickly.
Railroad cars, however, do not take the place of some boats on the
Ohio. Look out on the Monongahela at Pittsburg and you may see large
fields of boats,--many acres of barges, for there are barges on the
river still, though they do not look like the old ones. They are of
great size and are sometimes made of steel. The coal, taken from the
hill out of which it is dug, is run on a trestle along the river and
dumped into one of these boats. At Pittsburg the barges wait for the
water to rise to a “coal-boat” stage,--that is, until there is a depth
of at least eight feet all the way down the river Then a number of
barges are lashed together and a steamboat pushes them down the stream.
The water often comes up suddenly, and the coal must be rushed to
market while the high water lasts. A single towboat sometimes takes to
New Orleans several acres of coal from the great Pittsburg coal seam.
This lies flat under the hilltops and is mined from the edges where the
rivers have cut down through the coal, far into the beds of rock that
lie below.
[Illustration: FIG. 46. COAL BARGES, PITTSBURG]
On the Monongahela the United States owns fifteen dams with locks, and
the river is thus “slacked” far up into West Virginia. The dams change
the river into a series of long, still ponds, which are deep enough to
float the coal barges. Below Pittsburg, in the Ohio, is another dam
which sets the water back and makes a harbor for the city.
There is no coal to send down the Allegheny, but there are logs to
be rafted, and there is much oil, for the river flows through the
petroleum region around Oil City. Some of this is taken to refineries
at Pittsburg and made ready for use. Much natural gas is obtained by
boring and is used in the city for warming houses and for cooking.
[Illustration: FIG. 47. PITTSBURG AT NIGHT]
A cloud of smoke from the soft coal burned in so many shops and
furnaces hangs over the lower parts of Pittsburg and has given it
the name of “The Smoky City.” James Parton says that on the first
morning of his visit there he felt sure that he was rising very early,
for the street lamps were all burning and he ate his breakfast in a
room lighted by gas. As the room was filled with people, he thought
Pittsburg was very enterprising, and himself along with it, but he was
quite taken aback when he looked at his watch and found that it was
almost nine o’clock. Darker even than the streets are the “rooms” in
which thousands of miners, within a few miles of the city, dig out coal
with their picks and shovels.
If one rides into Pittsburg by night, he will see something finer than
fireworks. The train is likely to whirl him past long rows of fiery
ovens in which coal is being made into coke. And in many towns near by,
as well as along the rivers by the city itself, the jets of flame will
show iron furnaces and steel mills, with grimy workmen moving about in
the strange light.
[Illustration: FIG. 48. FURNACES NEAR PITTSBURG]
The iron ore for these furnaces is brought from many parts of the
country, but chiefly from the lands around lake Superior. It is shipped
down the lakes in large steamers and loaded into cars at Cleveland
or some other port on lake Erie. Instead of carrying the coal to the
ore, the ore is thus brought to the coal, without which it could not be
worked. The reason for this is that Pittsburg is much nearer the places
where most of the iron is to be used. If the coal of Pennsylvania were
taken to the iron mines of Minnesota and the furnaces built there,
much of the iron and steel would have to be carried back a long way to
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other parts of the East.
Glass mills form an important part of the city’s industries and have
been in operation for a long time. Bottle glass is manufactured here,
besides three fourths of all the plate glass of the United States.
Perhaps it is because bottles are made in Pittsburg that we find here
also the largest cork factory in the world.
Pittsburg is proud of the fact that she handles more tons of freight in
a year than any other city in the world. Indeed, the tonnage is greater
than that of New York and Chicago taken together.
The old “point” between the rivers is filled with tall buildings.
Inclined railways run up the steep bluffs on the further side of each
river and lead to the beautiful streets and the homes where many of
the people live. For Pittsburg is not all coal and furnaces and smoke,
but has fine churches, the great Carnegie Library and Museum, and many
schools. But it is mostly because of the coal and the rivers that we
find here a splendid city.
Sixty-three miles down the Ohio river, on its left bank, is Wheeling,
the largest city in West Virginia. The business streets lie close
to the Ohio, and the houses extend up the steep slope to the east,
while over a high ridge comes the old National Road from the valley of
Wheeling creek. Wheeling was the goal of many heavily laden wagons in
the days of the pike, and because of the river and many railroads has
a large trade to-day. It was settled in 1770 and is one of the oldest
towns on the river.
On the north bank of the great stream, in the southwest corner of Ohio,
is the largest city on the river. As late as 1900 Cincinnati had a few
thousand more people than Pittsburg, but a “greater Cincinnati” would
not be so large as a “greater Pittsburg.”
In Cincinnati, as in Pittsburg, men do business on the low grounds by
the river, where offices and mills and shops crowd one another, and
the smoke of soft coal hangs as a cloud above. Business hours over,
the well-to-do merchants climb out of the grimy town to the top of the
bluffs, and there find, in a clearer air and along open and beautiful
avenues, their comfortable homes. Down town the turbulent river
sometimes comes up forty or fifty feet beyond its usual level and makes
trouble in the busy city, but Mt. Auburn and Walnut Hills are disturbed
neither by smoke nor by floods.
Rivers do not often flow in straight lines, and it is very common for
them to change their courses along their flood plains. This habit
of shifting belongs alike to great and small streams, whether the
Mississippi or the brook in the meadow. The Ohio, like other rivers,
often writes the letter S, and in so doing at this point has swung off
from its old north bank, leaving a low plain with room enough for a
hundred thousand people to carry on their business. There is always
some good reason which has led to the settlement and growth of a town,
and the history of Cincinnati shows no exception.
It was in early winter, 1788, when cakes of ice were already floating
on the river, that a number of men sailing downstream stopped here
and began a settlement. The place was not readily named. It is said
that the matter was left to a frontier schoolmaster, and he did not
lose the chance to show how much he knew. He saw that the Licking
river comes into the Ohio on the Kentucky side just opposite. So
he set down an L. He next remembered an ancient word _os_, meaning
“mouth,” and he put that down. Then he considered that _anti_ means
“opposite” and that _ville_ means “town.” So he wrote the whole
name,--_L-os-anti-ville_,--_Losantiville_,--“the town opposite the
mouth of Licking.”
We might wonder whether a town with a name like that would ever grow
into a great city. It did not have to try, for it was not long before
General St. Clair, who had come there, made fun of the name and
insisted upon a new one. He and other officers of the American army had
formed a society commemorating their experience in the Revolution, and
in honor of the Roman patriot Cincinnatus had called themselves the
Order of Cincinnati. St. Clair thought this a good name for the town,
and Cincinnati it has been since that time.
The place has its nickname also, and its people like to call it the
Queen City, which seems to go very well with Beautiful River. Another
name, rarely used and not very pleasing, perhaps, to those who live
there, is “Porkopolis,” which came from the fact that for forty years
before the American Civil War more pork packing was done in Cincinnati
than anywhere else in the country.
[Illustration: FIG. 49. RIVER FRONT, CINCINNATI]
Sir Charles Lyell, an Englishman who saw Cincinnati in 1842, speaks
of the “pork aristocracy,” explaining that he means the men that had
grown rich by packing pork, and not the pigs that he saw running in the
streets. This shows how new some of our large business centers are,
though it would be a great mistake to suppose that pigs and cows now
run loose in western cities. In those days such places were teaching
the country how to “pack fifteen bushels of corn into a pig,” and how
to send the produce of the farms to distant cities or other lands in
such a way as to get the most money for the least freight.
When Charles Dickens visited this country many years ago he went to
Cincinnati, and spoke well of the place. This was a great compliment,
for the famous English story-teller was hard to suit when he was
looking at anything American. If he could come back to Cincinnati now,
he might find even more to please and surprise him.
Cincinnati has always made much use of the river. There were little
boats in which the owners carried notions and such things as a country
store sells, peddling them from one settlement to another along the
banks. There were barges and flatboats bearing families and farm
produce. Then came steamboats, which carried everything,--passengers,
grain, coal, merchandise, and even circuses and menageries. We can
imagine the excitement among the small boys of a river town when the
circus boat told of its arrival by the fierce blast of a loud steam
whistle. There are steamboats yet and a busy river front, but great
railroads center here, and trains run to Pittsburg and Philadelphia,
Cleveland and New York, Chicago and St. Louis, Nashville and New
Orleans. A vast business is done. There are many schools, and to-day
Cincinnati can boast of her music, of her pictures and museums, and of
the fine pottery that she makes. She has thrown off the schoolmaster’s
clumsy name, she has many better things than pork, and she is widely
known as one of America’s great cities.
An early writer says that the Ohio is “by far the noblest river in the
universe.” He writes this in the beginning of a history of Louisville,
a book which was printed in 1819. This in itself shows that Louisville
is one of the old cities of the Ohio valley. It is not so large as
Cincinnati or Pittsburg, but it is the chief city of the great state of
Kentucky.
The old boatmen, finding that the current was rapid at a certain point,
called it the “falls of the Ohio.” A ledge of hard rocks in the bed of
the river caused the rapids and made it no easy task to navigate boats.
Finally a canal was dug by which the rapids might be avoided at low
water.
It was this ledge in the river that started the town and finally
made a city out of Louisville, for boats going in either direction
naturally stopped at the falls. There was another reason, too, as we
shall see when we learn something of the “Wilderness Road,” which
crossed Kentucky from the eastern mountains and came out on the river
at Louisville. Back from the river also lay the rich and fertile Blue
Grass country for which Kentucky is famous.
The canal was ready to take steamboats around the ledge in 1831.
Some of these boats had interesting names, such as the _Enterprise_,
the _Vesuvius_, the _Comet_, the _Volcano_, the _New Orleans_, the
_Cincinnati_, the _Experiment_, the _Rifleman_, and the _Rising States_.
It was a wonderful life on the river, and Louisville got her share of
the gain of it, as she now shares the traffic of the railroads. To-day
she is a rich and beautiful city of two hundred thousand people.