How The Ohio River Got It's Name

      A view of the beautiful Ohio from the hills of Bells Mines.

Away up in the Alleghenies, a tiny streamlet starts rolling, and tumbling, and foaming over rocks, leaping over toy cascades, gathering the water from a thousand ravines and gulches till it becomes a roaring mountain torrent; and still sweeping on, now skirting a rich meadow of bottom land, and now passing beneath the shadow of towering bluffs and beetling crags, it becomes a beautiful and romantic little river, and meets another stream that rises within the hearing of the awful thunders of Niagara, and after receiving many a sportive branch and rippling rill and foaming creek and watering many a farm and garden in Western New York, and Pennsylvania it, too, reaches the magnitude of a river. These are the Monongahela and Allegheny. Like two merry, rocking, romping children they unite their destinies and form the beautiful Ohio. 

How did this river get its name, and what does the name signify? What do we understand by the word Ohio?" Here is the legend:

An Indian chief of the Miami tribe then occupying the shores of Lake Michigan, with a small band of his tribe, wandered southward on a hunting excursion. A few miles from the Ohio they startled a deer from his cover and despite all their wiley maneuvering the wary animal eluded the hunters, frequently in sight but always escaping the winged shafts sent after him. 

The deer led the hunting party southward till late in the afternoon, when they suddenly emerged from the dense forest into an open spot on a high piece of ground overlooking the river. About the middle of the stream was the deer, bravely swimming for the Kentucky shore, and safely beyond the reach of it's pursuers arrows, but all thought of the deer was lost in contemplation of the exquisite beauties of the scene before them.

For five miles above and ten below the majestic stream was in full view. Kentucky, then an unbroken wilderness, presented a landscape of undulating hills and fertile valleys, all clothes in the rich, green foliage of May, that looked like a land of enchantment. 

The Indian Chief, in appreciate of the beauty of nature and in his wonder, and admiration, uttered the ejaculation, "O High O."  And the chief had unconsciously given to the noble river a name that was destined to go with it through untold centuries.

At a later day the French came to this territory and explored the river from Pittsburgh to Cairo, and reveled in its beauties. They called it "La Belle Rivire" – Beautiful River.

 Looking from the bluffs of Cave-In-Rock, Illinois to the Kentucky side.  The mighty Ohio River is a beautiful sight.

If you have never seen the view of the Ohio from high atop the hills of Bells Mines, or from the top of the bluff on the Cave-In-Rock, Illinois side, you have missed a beautiful sight. Truly one of Crittenden County's treasures.  But the river can have a destructive side too, when the heavy rains cause it to flood into the low lying areas of her shores.  But today we look at the beauty.