The Allegheny River, for the bulk of its length, has never been classed as “an excellent waterway of commerce.” This is not surprising when you examine the very nature of the stream—for it is a river which is likely to be frozen solid from December until March, with ice piled in great packs and jams at perhaps thirty localities—piled mountain high with great ice blocks thrown into the most jagged contortions by reason of the grinding pressure brought to bear; then comes the annual “spring thaw" in which the Allegheny rids itself of the frozen constipation in one vast bowel movement which is a frightening spectacle to behold—urged by an enema of melting snow and drizzling rains which rile all the creeks to flood tide and cause a never-ending roar from each gully and ravine. The river stirs uneasily at first, winces, then with no warning whatever delivers itself of ice, drift, flotsam and jetsam, trees, logs, houses, barns, haystacks, cornshocks, barrels, dead pigs, bloated horses, boxes, barrels, packing crates, and other impedimenta which it has warehoused during the winter—all of the hodge-podge starts moving to the tune of thunderous cannonading of ice jams breaking, and one jam swoops down upon another, and with a continued crashing and rending the mighty discharge is on its way, now taking out bridges, piers, sometimes whole villages, with the natives of the bottom lands fleeing for the hills and terrified livestock jumping fences and racing away for Egypt or anywhere, so as to be shed of this cataclysm. “The Allegheny’s bust loose!” This cry is passed from mouth to mouth, and hurries over telegraph wires, and shortly every owner of floating property the entire length of the Ohio River, some 1,000 miles long, is suddenly busy getting his houseboat, or raft, or steamboat, or fleet of barges out of the road of this demon destruction. For oftentimes the full force of this upheaval runs at brim tide for several days, and the broad Ohio proves a meager plumbing system to handle this cosmic diarrhetic discharge. Not until the Mississippi is reached does the destruction cease, and sometimes not even then—for case-hardened blocks of Allegheny ice have serenely sailed by New Orleans at intervals.
Frederick Way, Jr.
The Allegheny, 1942