USA > Ohio > The picturesque Ohio : a historical monograph > Part 16
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Kentucky towns were originally made. But the twin cities have broken their old boundaries. Houses are scattered in neighborly groups along the choice spots of the beautiful Cov- ington highlands, and Newport has its secluded mansions that look down upon the Ohio River.
Above and below the cities the river on each side is lined with growing colonies of prosperous village suburbs, into which street railways are venturing, and thus the city links are being welded.
Several bridges cross the Ohio here. The suspension bridge, connecting Cincinnati with Covington, is a magnificent struc- ture, erected at a cost of $1,800,000, and was opened in 1867.
As a work of art the bronze fountain, which has given its name to the square in the center of Cincinnati, stands among the finest in the United States, and was presented to the people in 1871 by Mr. Henry Probasco, as a memorial of his brother-in- law, the late Mr. Tyler Davidson. The bronze work is cast from cannon purchased of the Danish government; but the figures are in themselves a study, symbolizing the uses and blessings of water, by August von Kreling, the son-in-law of Kaulbach, and were carefully carried out in every detail by Herr von Müller, of Munich, Bavaria.
The Public Library, a handsome building on Vine Street, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, contains about seventy-two thousand volumes, and has been open to the public since 1874. The new Chamber of Commerce building, at Fourth and Vine Streets, is the work of the well-known architect, Rich- ardson, and promises to take the first place among the city's handsome buildings, though the post-office and government offices occupy a very imposing one on Fountain Square, and most of the club-houses show remarkable architectural taste.
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It is impossible in this short summary of Cincinnati to do justice to the city, its well-kept streets and watchful municipal government, and its progress in every particular. Its street-car system and fire department can not be excelled in any city in the United States; it contains many handsome churches, and is foremost in public charities; its educational facilities, in all branches of art and science, are unlimited.
In all mention of Cincinnati, its suburbs and the Kentucky cities of Covington and Newport are included, for though both of these cities across the river have important iron interests, and together about seventy thousand inhabitants, yet it is easy to see that the prosperity of the Queen City is theirs also, and that their fortunes are indissolubly connected.
A peculiarity of the Kentucky shore below Cincinnati is the curious composite rock formation, apparently washed here and there into hollows by the water. The Big Miami River empties into the Ohio nineteen miles below Cincinnati, between the States of Indiana and Ohio, and a short distance from the city of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, situated on what is known as the high bottom-lands, and an important manufacturing center. Lawrenceburg is a well-built town, supplied with a levee suffi- cient to preserve it from the highest floods.
A little farther down we pass Aurora, a growing city. Then several small ports, including Carrollton, Kentucky, one of the oldest settlements; Preston, Milton; and, on the right bank, Madison, Indiana, beautifully situated in the midst of a fertile valley. Bethlehem, Westport, Herculaneum, and Utica are passed in turn before reaching the Falls of the Ohio and the beautiful city stretching along the shore. The unusual im- portance of a location at the "Falls of the Ohio" was seized
I5
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upon with a prophetic instinct by a small company of adven- turous volunteers, who landed at the mouth of Bear Grass Creek on July 8, 1773, and these few men were the first elements of population, where to-day there is a great and wealthy city. Captain Bullitt, the head of this small company, laid out a town site, and the year following built a house; but it was not until three years later that the State of Kentucky was created a sov- ereign State. Gratitude to the French king, Louis XVI, for declaring against England in the War of the Revolution, sug- gested the name of Louisville, and there were probably nearly 1,000 inhabitants here and in the immediate vicinity in 1800. When the town was founded, the enormous value of a canal around the Falls had been considered; for it is certain that a map of the town, drawn in 1793, presented the projected canal virtually as it was built thirty-seven years later. If a history of the people of Louisville were written, it would comprise three distinct periods. The first would be the pioneer period ; the second the building of the canal; and the third period "would comprise that of the organic change after the war, when the building of railroads, the abolition of slavery, and the development of agriculture in the new North-west temporarily endangered the future of the city."
The opening of new lines of railroads, and her connection with thirty-two navigable rivers, brings the Eastern coal-field, which covers one-fourth of the State's area, so near Louisville that it has had the effect of making coal for fuel cheaper here than anywhere else in the country. Coexistent with these coal- fields are forests of the finest timber known to the market. The virgin forest of Eastern Kentucky covers ten thousand square miles, and the Southern and Western forests are equally val- uable and extensive. Louisville is now the best and cheapest
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hard-wood lumber market in the world, and in addition is the natural gateway to the celebrated Blue Grass region.
An account of the city of Louisville, however short, would be incomplete without at least a mention of its beautiful Pub- lic Library, containing more than 40,000 volumes, its educa- tional institutions, and its numerous public and religious chari- ties. There are four well-known medical institutions, the Kentucky Institutions for the white and colored blind, with the government printing establishment for the blind attached, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The public alms- house cost $210,000 ; and a unique charity is the Masonic Wid- ows' and Orphans' Home, the single charity of the kind in the United States, and celebrated all over the world among Masons.
Louisville has six hospitals, eleven orphanages, two homes for friendless women, a home for old ladies, and a central organ- ized charity association ; also the best training-school for nurses in the country, with every facility and all expenses paid.
The city is also justly celebrated for its beautiful churches and Cave Hill Cemetery, of which the location is unrivaled.
Main Street still contains evidences of the original character of the city in some of the old business houses, and the river front, now in a continual turmoil of business and traffic, is the oldest quarter.
From the wharves three bridges span the Ohio, connecting with Louisville the cities of New Albany and Jeffersonville, Indiana, and opening the way for northern travel and traffic to the farther South through this thriving city. The one called the "Short Route," crossing the river below the Falls, con- nects the suburb of Portland with New Albany, Indiana, and is considered an engineering marvel. "Its lower end connects
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with the Kentucky and Indiana steel cantilever bridge. This beautiful structure, which cost $1,500,000, was begun in 1882, and completed in 1886. Its length is 2,453 feet, exclusive of the approaches, which, on the Kentucky side, are very picturesque and extensive. There are 9 piers, 7 of which are of limestone masonry, and 2 are cone-shaped iron cylinders, made of boiler- iron five-eighths of an inch thick, resting upon the bed-rock, and fitted with brick and concrete. The average height of the piers is 170 feet. The masonry of these piers is regarded by engineers as the most handsome and substantial ever placed in position for a bridge on the continent. The aggregate masonry contains 13,600 cubic yards of stone. The length of approaches on the Indiana side is 781 feet, and on the Kentucky side 3,990 feet. The bridge contains 2,414,261 pounds of steel and 3,625,000 pounds of wrought iron. It affords accommodation for railway, carriage, street-car, and foot traffic.
New Albany and Jeffersonville are practically a part of Louis- ville. New Albany is the county-seat of Floyd County. It is lo- cated in the center of the Ohio valley, three miles below the Falls of the Ohio River, opposite the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in latitude 38° 18' north, and longitude 8° 49' west. It is laid out upon an elevated plateau, upon two benches or plains, one twenty feet higher than the other, and sweeping northward and west- ward to a range of hills, that bear from the Indians the poetic name of the " Silver Hills," and which are from three hundred to five hundred feet in height. These hills, in the vicinity of the city, are being covered with charming suburban residences, many of them of beautiful architecture in design and adornment. The city was laid out in 1813 by Joel, Abner, and Nathaniel Scribner, the original plat embracing but eight hundred and twenty-six
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acres, the land being entered at the government land-office at Vin- cennes, when that town was the capital of the Territory of Indiana, . and purchased by the Scribners. The lots were disposed of by public auction on the first Tuesday and Wednesday of November, 1813, and the proprietors of the town stipulated that "one-fourth part of each payment upon lots sold shall be paid into the hands of trustees, to be chosen by the purchasers, until such payments shall amount to $5,000, the interest of which is to be applied to the support of schools in the town for the use of its inhabitants forever." New Albany was incorporated as a city in July, 1839, having a population of four thousand two hundred.
From the river, Louisville, with its pretty suburbs, Park- land, Clifton, "The Highlands," Anchorage, and Pewee Valley, makes a striking picture, supplemented by the famous Indiana "Knobs," which cross the Ohio below New Albany.
Clarksville, Indiana, evidently the site of an Indian village, and Shippenport, Kentucky (Shippingport), incorporated in 1785 as Campbelltown, are both swallowed up in the growth of Louisville, and long ago incorporated with the city. Shippen- port in 1815 was made of importance by the French, who erected there an enormous flouring-mill, which now stands, converted into a cement-factory.
The Louisville and Portland Canal "was opened in 1831, and was the first great engineering work in the United States; it proved eventually too small to accommodate all the craft on the Ohio, and the work of deepening and widening it was begun in 1860. The improvement was continued through the war up to 1866, when it ceased for lack of appropriations. In 1868 Congress voted $300,000 for resuming the abandoned work, and followed it by $300,000 more in 1869, and $300,000 in 1871,
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and gave $100,000 in 1873. Having thus expended such large sums, the next natural step was for the government to assume entire charge of the canal, which was accomplished in 1874 by the United States assuming the payment of outstanding bonds. From the date of the transfer, all forms of toll charges were abolished, and to this fact the waning powers of river transpor- tation owe whatever vitality remains at the present time.
"Under government auspices and direction the task of com- pleting the enlargement of the canal has not only been carried to completion, but a new project is now under way to successful accomplishment by which a secure and ample harbor will be afforded against the perils of moving ice in the colder seasons, for those large fleets of coal-tows that arrive from Pittsburgh with high stages of water. All the property is under respon- sible supervision by officers of the government, and the canal proper, with the improvements projected, will long remain as sightly memorials of a government devoted to the interests of inter-State commerce."
Below the Falls, near the village of Clarksville, there is a strong whirlpool through which, however, steamers can pass without danger. Perhaps the Ohio River is more beautiful at this point than anywhere from Pittsburgh to Cairo, broken at every mile with small islands, and on both sides shut in by long ranges of hills changing in shape with every turn and bend of the rippling water. The small towns of West Point and Brandenburg, Kentucky, and Mauckport and Leavenworth, Indiana, in the vicinity of the Wyandot Cave, may be men- tioned; then Alton, Indiana; Concordia, Kentucky; Rome, In- diana; and Stephensport, with Hawesville, Kentucky, opposite Cannelton, where there is drab and reddish sandstone, that
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is useful for subterranean and subaqueous work, such as foun- dation walls and bridge piers and abutments; and Tell City, Indiana ; Lewisport, Kentucky ; Grand View and Rockport, Indiana; and 149 miles below Louisville is Owensboro, Ken- tucky, the county-seat of Daviess County.
One hundred and eighty-three miles below Louisville we reach Evansville, Indiana, situated on a high bluff, always above high-water mark. It is also situated at the head of low-water navigation, midway between the Falls of the Ohio and its mouth. It is nine miles below the mouth of Green River, which drains that marvelously rich valley ; 40 miles above the Wabash River, a noble tributary of the Ohio, flowing through the most fruitful grain-producing country in the West; it is 140 miles above the mouth of the Cumberland, and 150 miles above the mouth of the Tennessee, the two magnificent streams that form the water-way of the iron and coal regions of Tennessee and Alabama.
Evansville is now, and has always been, the entrepôt for all these rivers, her steamboat lines having grown in number and wealth until they have practically a monopoly of the entire car- rying trade of these streams.
Evansville was named for General Robert M. Evans, born in Virginia in 1783, and died in 1844. He was an aid-de-camp of General Harrison, and led a portion of his brigade in the famous battle of Tippecanoe. Its large temperance hall was built mainly at the suggestion of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Selita Evans, in the town that bears his name.
A mile below Evansville is Lamasco, and twelve miles below is Henderson, Kentucky, which is said to be the richest town of its size in the country. A magnificent railroad bridge spans
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the Ohio River at Henderson, being the longest that crosses the river, and having cost $2,000,000.
The Kentucky shore now becomes very bare except for in- numerable small landings. On the Indiana shore, after West Franklin, comes the town of Mount Vernon. Then the river is everywhere broken by little islands; and twelve miles below Uniontown the Wabash divides the State of Indiana from Illi- nois. Raleigh is opposite.
Shawneetown, an old site and a prosperous town, follows in Illinois ; Caseyville and Weston, in Kentucky; 860 miles below Pittsburgh is the famous Cave in Rock, Illinois, noted for its great natural beauty, and as wild a spot as there is on the whole Ohio River. For years it was the rendezvous of a daring gang of outlaws, known as Murrell's men.
Separated by only two or three miles from each other are Elizabethtown, Rose Clare, and Golconda, Illinois; and a little above Smithland, Kentucky, the Cumberland River empties into the Ohio. Paducah, twelve miles below, is at the mouth of the Tenissee River. Below Paducah there are the towns of Brooklyn, Belgrade, Metropolis, Caledonia, and Mound City, Illinois, a city of "great expectations," which have never yet been realized. Its situation is most favorable for manufac- turing, and the deep water from here all the way down to Cairo makes it the best winter harbor for vessels in Western waters. The prosperity or decay of the city-its destiny, in fact-is bound up in that of Cairo. It was an important naval station during the war.
Thus approaching the city of Cairo, Illinois, one can not fail to realize its wonderful position at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Though in 1842 only 60 of the
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2,000 enterprising people were left, on account of financial disaster, who in 184I came here MISSOURI ARK. & TEX.RR PLAN OF CAIRO. to found a town, yet the active, prosperous city of SV W to-day shows no 5 R.R.TRANSFER trace of any ill- fortune. From a V "MEETING OF THE WATERS" AT CAIRO, first glance one would suppose the situation un- RRIN CAIRO UNION DEPO safe, on account of the frequent PARK HOTEL !!! floods of the two BANK CHO rivers; but exam- ination shows the city to be well guarded by im- mense levees, OHIO BAVER which are only needed to protect it from overflow c.K.e.c.R COPYRIGHT CITY NATIONAL BANK: during one or two ILLINOIS, CENTRAL R.A. months in the year ; during the KENTUCKY remaining ten or eleven it is far above the level of the waters, and the system of drainage is perfect. Cairo is the gateway to the entire South.
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No richer soil than that of Cairo and Alexander County can be found anywhere. The products of the North, the South, the East, and the West are produced at their very doors. Corn, that great Northern product, is produced more abundantly here than anywhere else in the country. The flour manufactured from the white winter wheat commands the highest price in the markets of the world. Oats are produced with profit everywhere here, while sorghum-cane, Irish and sweet potatoes, and all or- dinary farm products grow in the greatest profusion. Western Kentucky is admirably adapted to the growth of tobacco, while it is raised abundantly in Southern Illinois, especially in Will- iamson County, and also in South-east Missouri. Fields of growing cotton, that great Southern staple, may be seen bloom- ing every year within thirty miles of the city, in South-east Mis- souri. Clover seems to be indigenous in all this part of the country, and its production, both for hay and for the seed, is increasing rapidly.
All the uplands of Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky, and South-eastern Missouri are pre-eminently adapted to the raising of fruits and vegetables. Large fields are devoted to pie-plant and tomatoes. Strawberry-fields, ranging in size from one to forty acres, are found here. The crop is never a failure, and is generally profitable. Raspberries, blackberries, and all the smaller fruits grow luxuriantly. The crop of blackberries, which grow wild in the woods in all this part of the country, is beyond measure. A plain statement of the facts would seem almost incredible.
The culture of grapes upon the hillsides of Pulaski County is a growing industry, and is found to be very profitable. Apples and pears are produced for market, and with profit, while peaches
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are successfully raised about thirteen to fourteen years out of twenty. The demand for peaches is such that an orchard bear- ing a good peach-crop once in three years is a valuable invest- ment. Just across the river, in Missouri, in the counties of Mississippi and Scott, there is a large area of country, embrac- ing many thousands of acres of the finest land, which seems especially adapted to the raising of watermelons.
In seasons of great plenty, fruit here frequently rots on the ground, when, as often happens, the market is overcrowded, as Cairo is the center of the best fruit-growing region between New Jersey and Southern California.
It is said by experts that Cairo is the most convenient point in the country for the manufacture of iron and steel. A mixture of ores is always necessary for this purpose, and the cost of transportation, an important item ; and nowhere can coal limestone, and coke be brought together so cheaply as at Cairo. Fine Bessemer steel could be produced here at less cost than at any other point in the United States. These facts were recog- nized by a Pittsburgh iron king, but he died before the erection of his contemplated iron-works here could be carried out, and it remains for some one else to execute his unfinished plans.
We have now floated the entire length of this wonderful river. Touching its commercial and industrial importance to the Republic, the following cutting may not be inappropriate : "The seven States lying contiguous to the Ohio River, whose resources make up the vast wealth of the Ohio Valley, have within half a million of the population of the Atlantic States. The tonnage and commerce of the Ohio River is equal in value to the im- port and export tonnage of the entire Atlantic sea-board. The Ohio River States have paid in internal revenue taxes over
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$100,000,000 since 1861, and yet millions are spent on im- provements along the sea-coast, where only hundreds are spent in improving the Ohio River."
Before our last word is written, we wish to say to the reader who has come with us thus far, that the unsketched Ohio, which we have not been able to present to you "in its very habit as it lives," is as charming and attractive as are many of the pictured pages we have laid before you. Some of the un-illustrated rivers-for the affluents that feed it are a part of itself-have not the grandeur, nor the weird fascination of the mountain views of its Allegheny-born streams; yet there is nothing more unique in lowland, sylvan scenery than the lux- uriant vegetation which covers the valleys of the Muskingum, the Hocking, the Scioto, the Miamis, and the Wabash Rivers. Above the rich bottom-lands rise low, rounded hills, that skirt the winding shores in a panoramic succession of changing vistas. The freshness and tenderness, the variety of scenery thus given to the long river-reaches, mocks the skill of the writer, while it yet courts the pencil of the artist.
And now for that "last word " which awaits the saying, and which is somewhat difficult to say. It is addressed to the dwellers by the RIVER; and to those who live upon, and gather their gains from its waters.
It was not without reason that the illustrations selected for this book were drawn chiefly from the mountain regions "WHERE THE RIVER IS BORN," and from the forest uplands, where, in the deep, cool, shaded pools, the pure life-giving and life-conserving waters are collected.
The pictured exhibit we have herein given of the unspoiled river, while it lingers in the thickly wooded retreats of the
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mountain glens, is of itself a plea for the preservation of its .purity in the thousand-mile course it runs through the lowlands. If the lovers of the Ohio do not defend it from the evils civil- ization has begun to fasten, and will fasten upon it a hundred years from now, the beautiful valley of the " Deep Shining River " will be the valley of the shadow of Death .*
Nature, with her eternal resistance to man's misdoing, is constantly striving to free the river. The floods, with all their distructiveness, are not altogether evil besoms. Their rapid action has, time and again, started the sluggish currents between neigh- boring islands, and forced the quick motion of living waters into the forgotten by-paths of the stream. The STEAMBOATS also create a certain activity which assists in the release of obstruc- tions; and the RIVER COMMISSION has been of immense use in keeping the channels open. But the factor which could do most, and which is doing least, is PUBLIC OPINION. Let that giant shoulder the cause of the river, and sanitary science will smil- ingly come forward with all the appliances of experience and skill, to forward the good work.
The retired steamboatmen, who are struggling to sustair the ennui of existence in the gloom-breeding grandeur of gilded salons (unlike, and not so heartsome as the " Ladies' Cabin "), should do something for the relief of the beautiful highway, of
the waters, upon which they met benignant fortune. Their knowledge of the river, their experience of its moods, the con- crete wisdom, with its resultant use, which is the informing
* The reader is assured that this is not merely an æsthetic point, used to win the sympathy of the lovers of the beautiful, but a question of grave and material impor- tance to the dwellers in the towns and cities upon the RIVER. Should it serve for another quarter of a century as a great open sewer for dead animals, and an unlimited number of sewer systems ; each lovely winding river-stretch will be a central curve from which malarial evolvents will be described, the locus of the centers of hun- dreds of deadly circles.
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Thought of their collective accrescence, all warrant their fitness for the rôle of "advisory council " to the "River Legislators ;" who now only add a " worse confounded confusion" to the hope- less entanglements of the "How Not To Do It" Bureau, of In- ternal Improvements at Washington.
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