WABASH RIVER

The 'Wabash River' is a 475 mi (765 km) long river in the eastern United States that flows southwest from northwest Ohio near St. Henry, Ohio across northern Indiana to Illinois where it forms the southern Illinois-Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary.
When the Wisconsin Glacier melted 14,000 years ago, part of the meltwaters formed the proglacial Lake Maumee, the ancestor to Lake Erie. Eventually the meltwaters overtopped a glacial moraine located near Fort Wayne, Indiana, and catastrophically drained southwestward in the Maumee Torrent. The torrent carved the wide alluvial valley that the Wabash uses today.

Contents

History

Major tributaries

Trivia

Cities and towns along the Wabash

Illinois

Indiana

Ohio

See also

Further reading

Notes and References

External link

History

The name "Wabash" is an English spelling of the French name for the river, "Ouabache." French traders named the river after the Miami Indian word for the river, ''waapaahšiiki'', meaning "it shines white". The Miami name reflected the clarity of the river in Huntington County, Indiana where the river bottom is limestone.^[1] This is a historical oddity since today the river bottom is no longer visible due to water pollution and agricultural siltation.
The Wabash was mapped and named by French explorers to the Mississippi, including the sections now known as the Ohio River^[2]. For 200 years, from the mid-1600s into the 1800s, the Wabash was a major trading route, linking Canada, Quebec and the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River.
Two notable battles in U.S. history, St. Clair's Defeat (1791) and the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), were fought near the Wabash, and both have sometimes been called the "Battle of the Wabash".
A 329 acre remnant of the old-growth forests that once bordered the Wabash can be found at Beall Woods State Park, near Mount Carmel, Illinois.
In the 1800s, the Wabash and Erie Canal, one of the longest canals in the world, was built.

Major tributaries

The major tributaries of the Wabash River include:

★ Salamonie River (Indiana)

★ Little River (Indiana)

★ Mississinewa River (Indiana)

★ Eel River (Indiana)

★ Tippecanoe River (Indiana)

★ White River (Indiana)

★ Patoka River (Indiana)

★ Vermilion River (Illinois and Indiana)

★ Embarras River (Illinois)

★ Little Wabash River (Illinois)

★ Wildcat Creek (Indiana)

Trivia

★ The Wabash is the state river of Indiana and subject of the state song, "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" by Paul Dresser.

★ From the dam near Huntington to its terminus at the Ohio River, the Wabash flows freely for 661 kilometers (411 miles) which makes it the longest stretch of free-flowing river in the United States east of the Mississippi River.

Cities and towns along the Wabash

Illinois

★ Grayville

★ Hutsonville

★ Maunie

★ Mount Carmel

★ St. Francisville

Indiana

★ Andrews

★ Attica

★ Bluffton

★ Clinton

★ Covington

★ Delphi

★ Huntington

★ Lafayette

★ Lagro

★ Logansport

★ Markle

★ Merom

★ Montezuma

★ Newport

★ New Harmony

★ Perrysville

★ Peru

★ Terre Haute

★ Vincennes

★ Wabash

★ West Lafayette

★ Williamsport

Ohio

★ Fort Recovery

See also

★ List of Illinois rivers

★ List of Indiana rivers

★ List of Ohio rivers

★ Watersheds of Illinois

Further reading

Arthur Benke & Colbert Cushing, "Rivers of North America". Elsevier Academic Press, 2005 ISBN 0-12-088253-1

Notes and References

1. Bright, William (2004). ''Native American Placenames of the United States''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, pg. 537
2. Law, 10. Although the Wabash is today considered a tributary of the Ohio, it was considered the other way around in the early 18th century. This is due to the fact that the French traders traveled North and South from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Ohio River was not considered an important trade route until France and Great Britain began fighting for control over it, sparking the French and Indian War.


★ Law, Judge ''Colonial History of Vincennes'' 1858. Harvey, Mason & Co.

External link

★ The Wabash River Heritage Corridor Commission

★ Indiana Waterways-Wabash River Guidebook