by Jerry Hay
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The Ohio River It is my impression that there are two factors that cause people to be wary of exploring the Ohio River. One is the commercial river traffic and the other is the system of locks & dams. I have traveled the entire 981 miles of the Ohio River several times. I have explored it by canoe, cabin cruiser, deck boat, steamboat and towboat. There are challenges on the Ohio River, as there are on all rivers. The towboats with their huge barges are intimidating but can be dealt with safely, mostly using common sense. Towboats create a mild rolling wake that is easy to handle. Wakes from large cruisers are more difficult to manage than towboat wakes. The locks are not as scary as they seem to some people. Every vessel has the right to pass through them. If one follows the rules and has patience, locking is quite fun. I have canoed through locks with no problem. There are many printed materials and electronic devices that are an aid to navigation of the Ohio River. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers provides chart books; however, they are designed primarily for commercial traffic. The chart books do not show most of the adjacent roads, nor do they show supply information, interesting and historic sights or marina information. These books are large and it requires three of them for the entire length of the Ohio River. For large craft, one can purchase these charts on CD and use a laptop computer; however, this will give you no more information than the paper charts. There are inland cruising guides that provides marina information but little else. Cruising guides cover many waterways in one book, so there is limited information about a specific river. There are maps, charts, GPS systems and other devices to help navigate the Ohio River, but until nowthere has been no single portable source for all of the detailed information about the river for the true voyager. Many people want to do more than travel on the river. They want to explore it, learn about the history and be able to find on-shore facilities and places of interest. For some time I had considered making a guide book for the Indiana portion of the Ohio River. Many have requested a book similar to the Wabash and White River guidebooks that I have written. During the past years of traveling on the Ohio River, I have come to the conclusion that it would be inadequate to do this task for only the Indiana portion. Many boaters take river trips that take them beyond state lines and since the Ohio River is navigable from beginning to end, I decided that the undertaking should be for the entire river. A real guide book was needed for the Ohio River. Given this, I am announcing the completion of a comprehensive guide for the Ohio River. As with the guidebooks that I have done, it has all the important or interesting river and riverside detail. It shows the river broken down into 89 sections, with charts, photos, aerial images, information pages and much more. It has the best features of many sources, yet is easy to carry and store. It is also compatible for GPS coordinates, but even without GPS, charts, or computers, the book provides valuable stand-alone information to safely explore the Ohio River. For those with high tech navigation equipment and charts the book offers a great deal of information that is not available in those systems, and so supplements them quite well. BACK TO INDIANA WATERWAYS PAGE |
The Ohio River is often overlooked by boaters, and is certainly and Indiana River. Even though the waters are primarily in Kentucky, (the state line runs along the Indiana shore), it is very much a Hoosier river. It is the entire southern border of the state and has many access points, places of interest, marinas and interesting river towns along the Indiana shore. The Ohio is a beautiful river with amazing scenery. 
From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois the Ohio River provides boaters and floaters a mostly remote river with an abundance of wildlife, forests, islands and places of refuge. With the exception of the cities, it is a natural setting with the advantage of many access sites. Most of the cities and towns are “user friendly” with regard to the river. If you know where to find them there are plenty of places for supplies, food, lodging and fuel. For those who want to really get away from it all, the many islands and tributaries offer great anchorage and camping opportunities. 
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