Lewis and Clark are at the Falls of the Ohio preparing for the expedition’s next stage. Fellow traveler Thomas Rodney describes the craggy limestone lining the channels calling it a terrible place.
The “Falls” of the Ohio River
Victor Collot, A Journey in North America (1796), plate 18. Courtesy East Tennessee State University.
A “Terrable Place”
The rock that forms the great bed of the Falls is lime stone covered about 2 to 4 inches with a kind of iron stone . . . . [T]he limestone rock lies hard above [its] base about a foot thick and cracks various ways, and being cut to pieces brake of[f] in blocks[s] and great flakes, but are first but into deep holes and sharp and dreadful crags dangerous for vessels to touch . . . . They are a terrable place to pass through when the water is as low as now.
—Thomas Rodney[1]16 and 18 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, … Continue reading
Figure 1
Falls of the Ohio, Indiana Shore
Permission via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license by Censusdata.
Figure 2
Falls of the Ohio
Provided by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.
The Falls Today
Today, the dangers of the rapids at Falls of the Ohio are mitigated by the work of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Figure 1 shows the nature of the “dreadful crags,” the exposed fossil beds viewed from the Falls of the Ohio State Park. Both figures show the 14th Street Bridge which has been rebuilt several times since its original 1870 construction. In Figure 2, the George Rogers Clark Homesite is on the Indiana shore opposite the downstream end of the island.
Notes
| ↑1 | 16 and 18 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 122–23, 125. |
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Experience the Lewis and Clark Trail
The Lewis and Clark Trail Experience—our sister site at lewisandclark.travel—connects the world to people and places on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Discover More
- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
This page was funded in part by the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, U.S. National Park Service.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
with cooperation and funding from the following organizations:
- Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail
- Montana Committee for the Humanities
- Idaho Governor's Lewis and Clark Trail Committee
- The Capital Gallery (Lewis and Clark Fort Mandan Foundation)
- Yellowstone Public Radio
Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).