USA > Ohio > The picturesque Ohio : a historical monograph > Part 14
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The old-time pilots trained in the schools which required daring as well as doing, are still in their old places; for their gains were less, and their skill was so wonderful, and their courage so constant that they could not be spared from the "pilot-house."
The course of the Ohio is a very crooked one. From Pitts- burgh it takes a north-west direction for about twenty-five miles, then turns in gradual inflections west-south-west, following this general direction for nearly five hundred miles, when it bends more decidedly to the south-west for one hundred and sixty miles, then almost due west in easy serpentine curves to
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where it joins the Mississippi in a south-east course, latitude 36° 46', eleven hundred miles below its source. The dangers and difficulties of this tortuous course are increased when the un- certain currents of its lower tributaries increase the volume of its waters; and the floods fill up or wash out the river-bed into new channels. In addition to these opposing forces in its lower lengths, the river has numerous islands-fifty within a distance of three hundred and ninety miles. Its banks are low where the hills recede from the water, leaving wide stretches of bottom-lands which are subject to heavy inundations when a late spring and fre- quent rains bring the melting snows in swelling torrents down from the mount- ains.
Yet let the wind "blow high or blow low," let the floods come, let the tricky river play at hide- and-seek with its channel, the skill of the pilot is rarely at fault. Mas- ter of the wheel, he calm- ly faces the sit- uation and holds his own. The Ohio has two regu- lar seasons of
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high water, the spring floods varying in date from the last of February to May, and even so late as June; and the autumn " rises," from October to early December.
From DUQUESNE HEIGHTS, at Pittsburgh, one has a com- manding view of the junction of the Allegheny and the Mononga- hela. There are charming border stretches up the valleys of the formative affluents, and a wonderful breadth of effect where the Ohio sweeps its collected streams around Davis Island. If one sees this striking river-view in the clear and pure out- line, in the precise distinctness of dawn, or when the setting sun lights the reflective waters with resplendent color, it is fixed in the mind for all after days. To an imaginative person the scene is most attractive at night; for it seems "a faëry vision," when the natural-gas torches are aflame with the New World's exhibit of the "Holy Fires of Baku."
The story of the Ohio has a certain mystic and poetic back- ground which gives it a striking and weird significance in the chronicles of the last two centuries, altogether different from the tame and commonplace annals of other gentle-flowing streams.
The RIVER has not only been the scene of dramatic incidents, but it has also been the cause of leading events. In the various conflicts for its possession, and in the successive tragedies enacted upon its banks, it was not merely
"Part of the fateful setting of the play,"
but an actual Character in a series of occurrences to which it lends the investiture of dramatic unity. In the legends of the Western Indians, who fought for it with such persistence and relinquished it with such bitterness, it ranks as a Personage, and in their traditional stories it bears a strangely grotesque likeness to the fabled river gods of classic Greece.
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The streams running into the Ohio have rich bottom-lands, which are easy of culture, but nothing could excel the fertility of the River's banks. Michaux, the eminent French naturalist, who went down the Ohio in 1803, says :
"The soil is a true vegetable earth produced by the thick bed of leaves annually collected on the ground for centuries, and converted into mould by the prevalent humidity. Additions have been made to these successive beds of vegetable earth from the trunks of enormous trees destroyed by age. . . I have seen nothing to be compared to the vegetative power of these forests."
He gives the measure of a plane-tree (Platanus occidentalis), the circumference of which, at five feet above the ground, was forty feet and four inches-about thirteen feet in diameter. He adds: "General Washington measured this same tree fifty years ago."
The forests that edge the southern affluents of the Ohio, and cover the overlooking heights, are grouped into colonies of soft and hard wood-of willow, poplar, sycamore, gum, maple, wal- nut, cherry, ash, hickory, and oak; while above all, and over all, tower unnumbered acres of pine and cedar.
There are nowhere any wide, billowy prairies, rolling back- ward from the Ohio, yet the narrowness of the landscape only adds a more striking and definite effect to the presentations offered in the long successive miles of alternating cities, villages, farms, and forests upon its banks. Its marginal stretches of uncultivated woodlands show a richness of coloring, a magnifi- cence of growth, a luxuriance of hanging vine and flowering shrub, that belong of right only to a virgin forest, and yet this unspoiled wilderness of shade that lends its most perfect charm
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to the river is, in the main, a voluntary growth of the last twenty years.
Then, again, the river is unlike all others in its constant reproduction of certain characteristics. From Pittsburgh to Cairo its individuality is never lost. The graceful curves con- tinue their sentinel line of unending, yet ever-changing, linked and rounded hills, which stretch from the out-pushing spurs of the Allegheny Mountains, to where the Mississippi sweeps its solemn floods by the little city which is yet to be the Queen, as it is now the Gateway of Rivers-never losing the glittering continuity of its water-reflected chain.
Situated at the head of this remarkable system of inland navigation, PITTSBURGH reaches by river transportation eighteen States and two Territories, while it also stands as the center of railway systems that radiate to all points of the compass. Along the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers, for some distance from Pittsburgh, shipment direct from the factories is daily practiced; and the increasing demand for cheap transporta- tion, encouraging the rivalry between the natural water-ways and the railway-systems, will finally cause all the navigable affluents of the River to be made as available for transport as engineering skill can render them.
The OHIO is a continuation of the Monongahela, and not of the Allegheny, which arrives at the conflux in an oblique direction, and is a swifter, as well as a clearer, stream than the larger southern affluent. From the very force and swiftness of its descent from the uplands, the Allegheny was always compara- tively free from obstructions to navigation, while the sluggish Monongahela has been opened by a system of locks, ending at Davis Island Dam, which effectually protects it from the ag-
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gressive incursions of the Allegheny. Nine bridges link Alle- gheny City and Pittsburgh, and five span the Monongahela.
Fort Pitt, built by the troops, was finished about the Ist of January, 1759. The French, from Venango, were preparing to undertake its reconquest. However, hearing that Sir William Johnson was marching against Fort Niagara, they were diverted from their undertaking. At this opportune moment General John Stanwix presents himself in the list of memorable histor- ical names. He was chief engineer in constructing the defens- ive works, of which he says in a letter dated September 24th : "It will to latest posterity secure the British empire on the Ohio.". Washington writes, in 1770, criticising its construction which was afterwards partially remedied.
In 1760 the works were reported completed from the Alle- gheny to the Monongahela, and they cost the British Govern- ment £60,000 sterling. Fifteen years later it was abandoned by order of the British Government, and now nothing of Fort Pitt remains, and the only memorial of the British possession of the Mississippi Valley is a single "redoubt," built in 1764 by Colonel Bouquet, outside the fort, now used as a dwelling. It was prob- ably soon after the Battle of Bushy Run that Colonel Bouquet built the "redoubt " (1764), and in the same year Colonel John Campbell laid out that part of Pittsburgh bounded by Water, Second, Ferry, and Market Streets. From this time forward the fort was the scene of Indian treaties rather than battles, and the point of departure for various expeditions against the hostile tribes. The growth of the incipient town was slow, and the early allusions to it are far from being complimentary or pro- phetic of the greatness which it has attained; indeed, its inhab- itants were spoken of in 1766 as living in “ some kind of a town
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without the fort ;" and in 1770 the log houses are said by Colonel Washington to be about twenty in number, and inhabited by In- dian traders. The ramparts of the fort were still standing in 1796 ; but in the meantime another smaller fortification had been erected by Major Isaac Craig, called Fort La Fayette.
The survey of the "Manor of Pittsburgh" was authorized on January 5, 1769, and the lands embraced within it were five thousand nine hundred and sixty-six acres. In the fall of 1783, the two proprietors, J. Penn and J. Penn, Jr., determined to sell tracts to the "Manor," and in January, 1784, the first sale of lands within the boundaries of Pittsburgh was made to Isaac Craig and Stephen Bayard. Lots were quickly sold, and the era of development began. In Niles' Register, the town is reported to have, in 1786, thirty-six log houses, and one stone and one frame house, making a population of three hundred and eighty, leaving, of course, the garrison of thé fort out of consideration. In 1788, Dr. Hildreth says: "Pittsburgh then contained four hundred or five hundred inhabitants, several re- tail stores, and a single garrison of troops in old Fort Pitt. To our travelers (the pioneers of the multitude that afterwards passed through the gateway of the 'Beautiful River'), who had lately seen nothing but trees and rocks, with here and there a solitary hut, it seemed to be quite a large town. The houses were chiefly built of logs, but now and then one had as- sumed the appearance of neatness and comfort."
In 1796 the borough contained 1,395 people; of these, a few years later, Mr. Neville B. Craig could only enumerate one hundred and two houses standing in the Pittsburgh of 1796. The city, incorporated March 18, 1816, attained a population in 1820 of 7,248, and from that time onward the decades of its
LOOKING UP ELK CREEK. (CHARLESTON, W. VA.)
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growth have been as follows: In 1830, 12,568; in 1840, 21,115; in 1850, 46,616; in 1860, 49,217; in 1870, 89,076; in 1880, 156,- 381; in 1890, 238,473 ; and during this time the city of Alle- gheny grew apace with Pittsburgh, separated from it by the Allegheny River. So in the brief interval-measuring time by history-of one hundred and thirty-two years, peace has suc- ceeded war. Now the battle of industry is being incessantly fought, and with greater success than the former ones, though filling the air with smoke and steam instead of powder.
The Pittsburgh of to-day shows the immense advantages of its position in the leading iron and steel producing county of the United States, that of Allegheny. Well named the "Gateway of the West," its situation in respect of water interests, at the fork formed by the Allegheny and the Monon- gahela Rivers where they meet and flow into the Ohio, gives it a trade on that river rivaling in extent and importance the en- tire foreign commerce of the United States. So as to make the Allegheny River an extension of the Ohio for thirty miles, two or three dams have been constructed, and the vast aggregation of manufactories and work-shops of Pittsburgh and adjacent country, really constitute an arsenal for the creation of war ma- terial of all sorts second to no other point in the country. In every war fought by the United States, Pittsburgh has been a vital point of supply. Over four thousand cannons have been mail- ufactured here for the use of the Government, many of them of the heaviest caliber known at the time.
From the date of the construction of the "New Orleans," in 18II, until the present time, steamboat-building has been a lead- ing feature of its industries, and one steamer per week was turned out from the shops and boat-yards for a quarter of a
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century, beginning with the year 1842. Also in most of that period, half the steam-fleet navigating Western waters was Pitts- burgh built, and the progress made in skill and science of con- struction was largely drawn upon when the demands of the war required craft of novel designs and purposes. Incidental thereto was the devising of steamers capable of towing coal-boats and barges. Experience tempted the river men, when once the effi- cacy of lashing boats together rigidly, and to the stern-wheeler's front, was established, to go on increasing the power of engines and steering apparatus, so that now Pittsburgh has steamers that can take twenty thousand tons of coal to market, a cargo greater than the "Great Eastern" ever handled, and, what is of far more importance, the expense of transportation is lower than by any other system of carrying in the world.
The amount of coal shipped from here alone is enough to place Pittsburgh among the leading ports of the world. Her tonnage embraces at least four thousand one hundred barges, boats, and " flats," and their money value, added to the steam- fleet, makes a total investment of $10,000,000.
The commencement of the maunfacture of iron in Western Pennsylvania dates back to the year 1790, and the pig-iron in- dustry of Pittsburgh has been highly successful in the last quar- ter of a century. The center of production for the whole coll- tinent now lies very probably within the limits of Pittsburgh. The iron and steel trades have grown rapidly since the intro- duction of natural gas.
The following extracts from the Ohio Valley Manufacturer will show the importance of the Bessemer invention : "The casting of the great Bessemer steel gun for the United States government at the works of the Pittsburgh Steel Casting
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Company was a success. Sixteen thousand five hundred pounds of melted iron were used; sixty men were employed in the operation one hour and thirty-seven minutes. The great im- portance of this experiment consists in the fact that the gun cast under this new method will cost $3,300, while the built-up gun, under the old method, would cost $22,000.
These Bessemer steel plants will steadily increase in value to the full net profit to the country of $100,000,000 a year, not a dollar of which goes out of the country and not a dollar of which is lost. This $100,000,000 will be distributed along the lines of new railways, along the sources of coke and coal, with the transportation by rail and steamboat, and in the mines, and with their owners and laborers, and ten years hence the country will be worth $1,000,000,000 more for it."
No large interest in which local capital is concerned has grown more rapidly within recent years than the manufacture of Connellsville coke. At the very gates of Pittsburgh and tributary to her commerce, are located the interesting and unique coke-making regions of Western Pennsylvania. The one product of this limited area is coke, a commercial fuel which is sought for by iron founders and smelters from Lake Cham- plain and New York on the east, to Salt Lake and Omaha on the west, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Coke is the product of slow combustion applied to the soft bitu- minous coal of the region.
This coal is a well-defined portion of the "Pittsburgh coal- basin," the vein varying in thickness from 8 to II feet, and worked at all depths below the surface of the ground down to 300 feet. The entire deposit of coal lies to the south-east of Pittsburgh, and varies in width from two to twelve miles, with
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a length of about forty miles. Mining engineers have explored every coal-bearing region of the country for a coal identical with Pittsburgh's Connellsville coking coal. Though its discovery would be worth untold millions, their efforts have been vain.
Glass making is, perhaps, Pittsburgh's oldest industry, and has grown to be of prime importance in her general industrial ac- count. It was established here in 1795, among the first in the country, and was, in addition, remarkable in that it was the first also in the United States in the use of coal as fuel. There are now in operation in the district a large number of glass fac- tories .of all classes, including several for the manufacture of plate-glass. Many millions of glass bottles and flasks are pro- duced annually, including a large proportion of the flint-glass prescription bottles used by the physicians of the country. Pittsburgh also supplies most of the lamp-chimneys used in the United States.
The recent substitution of natural gas for coal in all the pro- cesses of glass-making has had a beneficial effect, which can not be estimated. Because of its purity and freedom from sulphur, the glass produced with it is better in every way, perfectly free from flaw or speck, and adding to the attractiveness of the table by the peculiar brilliancy and beauty of the pressed ware. With natural gas the finest plate-glass in the world is produced, and that of Pittsburgh is rapidly superseding all others in our American markets. Formerly it was difficult to sell plate-glass of Amer- ican manufacture, and it was necessary to counterfeit the stamps of foreign manufacturers in order to procure a sale for it. The superiority of the home-made plate-glass is now acknowledged, thanks to natural gas, and the factories are unable to keep up with the demand, though running to their full capacity.
The chief industries of Pittsburgh, glass, iron, and steel.
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speak for themselves. Skilled artisans can easily find employ- ment here for almost every specialty now turned out in the Old World, and the growing and wide-spread desire for fine goods all over the great West and the reviving South, are important elements in the calculation of those who consider the fact that these regions have for years been in the habit of looking to Pittsburgh for their glass-ware. Where the window-glass for a quarter of a million of houses is made; where ninety millions of bottles and vials, twelve millions of tumblers, and forty mill- ions of lamp-chimneys are manufactured every year, there is also the place for the production of colored and cut glasses to rival Murano, Belgium, and Bohemia.
Enough has been said to show the importance of Pittsburgh as the first in the list of cities and towns on the Ohio River in respect of wealth and progress as well as situation. The city itself, with its well-planned streets, is interesting from its never- ceasing life and bustle. Nothing could be more fascinating, even to an amateur, than a visit to its colossal steel-works, from the great " puddling " process to which the iron is exposed to when it lies finished the most beautiful steel for every possible pur- pose, all by the aid of natural gas; the Bessemer Steel Works, with the wonderful invention of which so much has been said and written, to the glass-works, where hours could be passed watching the dexterity only acquired by the habits of a life-time in turning the formless mass of "spun-glass" into articles of every-day use.
About five and one-half miles below Pittsburgh is Davis Island, at the foot of which is located the first movable dam on the Ohio River. This work was commenced in August, 1878, and the system decided upon was the one that has been so suc- cessful on the Seine, Yonne, Marne, Meuse, and other French
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rivers, that known from its inventor as the Chanoine. Its com- pletion was celebrated in October, 1885. The total cost of the dam was less than $900,000.
The river below Pittsburgh for the next ten miles is thickly settled. Passing Glendale, Haysville, and Sewickley, through most luxurious vegetation, Economy Village, hedged in by the rounded contours of the hills, is reached. This is the third home of the Harmony Society, who emigrated to this country in 1803 from South Germany, followers of George Rapp, the founder of this communistic society. The members own twenty- five hundred acres of the surrounding country, of which every inch is cultivated. Mr. Charles Nordhoff gives an interesting description of this society in his "Communistic Societies of the United States."
Another twenty miles bring us to the enterprising town of East Liverpool, Ohio, where several thousand men are engaged in the manufacture of porcelain and stone ware. "The veins of fire-clay on both sides of the river, between East Liverpool and Wheeling, are extensive and inexhaustible, and are proving a rich source of revenue to that section, and an important factor in the manufacturing interests of this valley. The busi- ness had a beginning in Hancock County, West Virginia, fifty- five years ago ; but it is only quite recently that its importance has attracted the attention of large capitalists, whose energy and business tact are rapidly pushing it to the front of American industries. Between East Liverpool and Wheeling there are a number of these works, most of them very extensive, and many new ones are in contemplation. All are crowded with orders, and ship goods to every section of the country."
Sixty-seven miles below Pittburgh we reach Steubenville,
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Ohio, the capital of Jefferson County. This is a progressive and well-laid-out town, and wears its name in honor of Baron Steuben, of Revolutionary fame, though the fort first named after him was destroyed by fire in 1790. The town, for a time, made but slow progress, but was incorporated a city in 1851. The Ohio being at all times navigable southward from Steubenville, it is in reality the head of navigation the whole year round, as during freshets Pittsburgh and other towns above are completely iso- lated. More tumblers are made here than in any other city on the globe, the largest works turning out upwards of 36,000 tumblers per day. This city can also boast of the largest glass- chimney works in the world, while, as a place of residence, it presents many attractions.
Leaving Steubenville the views all along the river are par- ticularly beautiful; the distant hills make a fine background for the shining water as it curves in and out its green banks, and at a distance of about thirteen miles from Steubenville, near Tilton- ville, an Indian mound is plainly visible .*
Thirty miles further down we reach the great bridge over which the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses from Ohio to Virginia, and at our left lies the beautiful city of Wheeling, in West Virginia. Wheeling is situated on an alluvial area
* Of these mounds Ohio alone contains 11,500, and-with the earth-works, called inclosures, there are 13,000. Nothing positive is known as to the race by which these mounds were built, called Mound-builders, from the nature of the traces they left behind them. Pre- historic they certainly were, whether in the sense of antedating the discovery of America or not, remains a question that seems to admit of much discussion. These mounds are di- vided by different archæologists into several classes, chief among which are the military and the sacred. One of the most remarkable of these earth-works is Fort Ancient, on the east bank of the Little Miami River, 33 miles north-east of Cincinnati, and, in fact, they abound in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys ; for, with no other proof than the size and number of the mounds, the fact is established that the Mound-builders were, to a certain extent, tillers of the soil, and selected sites near the rivers, where not only was communication assured, but vegetation abounded.
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or isthmus on the east side of the Ohio River, about 96 miles below Pittsburgh, and lies on both sides of Wheeling Creek, which empties into the Ohio River. The geographical position of the city combines the agricultural advantages of an inland town with all the sources of prosperity arising from navigable water-courses and great national thoroughfares. It is surrounded by bold and precipitous hills, containing almost in- exhaustible seams of bituminous coal, while its location on a high elevation of ground renders it secure from inundations and ravages of high water. It nestles like a gem in its setting right amid these foot-hills of the Appalachian range, the most famous and richly-endowed coal-producing mountain range in the world. Every one of these foot-hills or spurs in the neighborhood of Wheeling is rich in coal deposits. In fact, every county in West Virginia, between the Ohio River and the Maryland and Virginia lines, is underlaid with coal in quantities and in all desirable va- rieties. Wheeling is, in more than one sense, the metropolitan center from which the agencies which nourish and strengthen the balance of the State radiate. She has geographical advan- tages and facilities which render it possible for her to become one of the notably progressive centers of the country.
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