Rivers Of Pennsylvania

Our vacation train travel took us through Pennsylvania for many hours. Trains prefer to travel on level land and so that meant that most of the time, we were paralleling the waterways of Pennsylvania. We began our trip in New York and then New Jersey, but I am going to ignore these well known rivers. For me, it was when I ended up seeing rivers I had either never seen or hadn't seen in decades, that made the train trip. The first one we encountered was the eastern most of the big three, the Susquehanna River. The river, which drains into the Chesapeake Bay, was quite high and flooding the trees along the banks. It was very wide where we crossed it and with the mountains around, quite beautiful.

As you will see later, it was not as muddy as some other rivers we crossed in our travels.


We KNEW we were going to see this dramatic vista, probably the most photographed image of the Downtown Pittsburgh area. The Point usually has an incredible fountain shooting water high up into the air, but it is currently under renovation, and thus, closed to the public. A shame that we missed it, but the beauty of the area, was still there. The fact that many of the bridges that cross the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers are painted a bright yellow, give the area a special look.
The two rivers were running high and thus, the Ohio River (on the far left side of the photo) was also running high. The Ohio eventually enters the Mississippi River at Cairo, IL. That was the original reason the Army Corps of Engineers blew up the levee at Bird's Point a few weeks ago, to save the city of Cairo. For those who don't know, the Allegheny River is to the north of the city (the top of the photo) and the Monongahela River runs to the south of downtown (the bottom of the photo).



Speaking of the south side of Pittsburgh...

Bear Run which flows under Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, drains into the Youghiogheny River. The Youghiogheny which is pronounced Yock (like rock) a heny, drains into the Monongahela River. Thus, Bear Run, which we stood above, when on our tour of the house, is a tributary of the Monongahela River. Taking this to it's logical conclusion...the water in this photo, that we watched flow under the house, drained out into the Gulf of Mexico a few days later. Wow!



The Potomac River really doesn't run much in the state of Pennsylvania but some of the streams in the state eventually end up in the river as it makes it's trip through the Appalachian Mountains, to the sea, at Washington, D.C. We followed the river, almost from it's source, to the mouth of the river in Washington. As you can see, it was very full of mud and very much running over it's banks. There are rapids along the way and it has not one, but two sources, the North Fork of the River and the South Fork. The Shenandoah River empties into the river at the town of Harper's Ferry, which besides being historic, is quite beautiful to see.

I hope you enjoyed a tour of the rivers and a little history of the waterways.