Louisville and the "Falls of the Ohio"

Extensive locks and dams are found at Louisville today (2017).

As one heads downstream from Pittsburgh, the land on either bank becomes increasingly flat, from the mountains of West Virginia, to the hills of Ohio and Indiana, to the flatlands below Louisville, the great way station for early boating on the Ohio. At Louisville a series of rapids announce a drop of twenty-two feet over two miles, and it was precisely because of these rapids that Louisville was the major Ohio River city (excluding, of course, Pittsburgh), surpassing even Cincinnati. In the early days of steamboat travel, boats often stopped to wait, sometimes for weeks, for water to rise sufficiently to traverse the “Falls of the Ohio,” and even then pilots were required for larger boats. Passengers often portaged around the rapids, changing to a different vessel on the other side. Even after the Louisville and Portland Canal, bypassing the rapids, was dug in 1830, Louisville remained a major terminus and embarkation point for steamboat trips, a persisting role because the canal was too small for larger boats, because the locks were often closed to clean out mud and debris, and because many steamboat owners were unwilling to pay what they felt was an exorbitant fee for canal passage. Today, a complex system of locks and dams, through which Mary Frances and I traveled on our recent trip, allows boats to traverse the “Falls of the Ohio.”

Paddlewheelers still dock at Louisville today, but

these are used for day trips and dining (2017).

Louisville was a major stopping point for Nicholas and Clara on their trip to Cape Girardeau. Though this break could have been for a portage around the falls or to await a river rise, Louisville appears to have been an actual destination or, at least, a planned break. Nicholas may have been looking for work. And he may have had relatives there. For at the time, there were Wehners in Louisville.

Related or not to the local Wehners, Nicholas and Clara stayed in Louisville only a few months. In the fall of 1847 they continued on to Cape Girardeau.