Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1907 — THE GREAT OHIO VALLEY FLOOD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE GREAT OHIO VALLEY FLOOD

The Ohio basin embraced an area of 201.700 square miles, or 16 per cent of the great Mississippi Valley. The valley is divided Into five divisions, of which the Ohio and its tributaries are second only to the Alissouri basin, and include a watershed of 35,000 square miles more than that of the Mississippi itself above the Missouri River. Waters from fourteen States find their way to the Gulf of Mexico through the channels of the Ohio great drainage system. It stretches as far northeast as New York and as far south as Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. At no point on the Ohio or the Mississippi is what is

* known as the “danger line” as high as at Cincinnati, where no great impediment to transportatisn or inconvenience to residents is occasioned until the 50-foot stage is reached. At other points the danger line varies from 22 feet at Pittsburg to 45 at Cairo, ill., and Vicksburg, Miss., to 16 feet at New Orleans. Although the highest known stage at Cincinnati is 71 feet % inch in 1884, the big Alississippi and Missouri floods of 1903 forced the water to a height of 82 feet «at Arkansas City, Ark., 85 feet at New Orleans and 105 feet at Melville, Louisiana. gSS The shaded portion of the center of the map indicates the flooded region.