Along the Ohio River: Cincinnati to Louisville

By Robert Schrage and Donald Clare

The Ohio River is not only a river of scenery and beauty, but also one of opportunity. It is a river of journey and exploration; a river of dreams, both personal and private; a river of commerce and enterprise. It is also a river of floods and destruction. Along the Ohio River: Cincinnati to Louisville journeys down this dynamic river. The postcard images show many riverfront scenes, from the cities along the way to excursion steamboats, river scenery, and the river at work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jul 26, 2006
• ISBN: 9781439617397

Robert Schrage

Robert Schrage is active in local history circles. He has served on numerous local historical boards and is a frequent speaker on local and regional history. In 2015, Schrage received the William Conrad Preservation Excellence Award for Lifetime Achievement in preservation of local history. His previous works include The Hidden History of Kentucky Political Scandals, Lost Northern Kentucky, Legendary Locals of Covington, Eyewitness to History: A Personal Journal (winner of honorable mentions at the New York, Amsterdam and Florida Book Festivals) and more.

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INTRODUCTION

So, what is it about the Ohio River? There seems to be a fascination and a reverence all throughout history connected to this 981-mile artery through our country’s midsection. The Native Americans called it by several different names depending on the different dialects. The Iroquois called it Oyo, which the French translated as the beautiful river and named it La Belle Riviere. Thomas Jefferson declared it the most beautiful river on earth. And Zadoc Kramer, in his famous early-1800s river navigation guide, deemed it the most beautiful river in the universe. And generation after generation of Americans have admired and enjoyed this same beauty, so much so that its history and heritage have been recorded and preserved in many forms. But one of the most unlikely or unusual media of recorded Ohio River history is the postal card, today’s postcard.

Deltiology is the study and collecting of postcards. Originally a product of the United States Postal Service, the postal card was a convenient, self-contained, and less-costly means of conveying a note or message to someone, somewhere. In the 1890s, these cards reserved the back side for the address only. Only the front could be used for the message. Right after 1900, private concerns began to produce and publish postcards with pictures on the front. Still the message had to be on the front also. That is why some of the images in this book have writing on the front picture. Later in the first decade of the 20th century, the postal service came up with the divided-back postcard, on which the right side was reserved for the address and the left side was available for the written message. Postcards now featured a full-picture front, and the subject matter was endless. Regional landscapes and architecture were very popular.

We, the authors of this book, have chosen to portray a specific section of the beautiful Ohio River, from Cincinnati to Louisville, using privately published picture postcards of river and river community scenes as our medium source. Cincinnati has a very strong German settlement heritage. The German lithographers and printers were eons ahead in the technological aspect of publishing postcards in the early 1900s. Consequently there were a lot of these river scenes published in Cincinnati by German companies. Kraemer Art Company is one such publisher and is well represented as a publisher of many of the postcard images featured in the book.

The Ohio River is not just a river of scenery and beauty. It is also a river of opportunity. It is a river of journey and exploration. It is a river of dreams, personal and private as well as public and regionally based. It is a river of commerce and enterprise. It is a river of peaceful relaxation and recreation. And just about the time travelers or residents become one with the river, endearing all its positive qualities, the river can turn. Ravenous floods and destructive crushing ice have many times taken lives, businesses, homes, dreams, and the very opportunities that lured folks there in the first place. And remember, the Ohio always returns for the things it left behind the previous time.

Some people say the river is fickle, that it will lure you and tease you with peace and tranquility and a sense of security. Then about the time you feel safe and satisfied, it will snatch it all away in one ravenous display of dominance. Consider this: maybe it is man who has been the fickle one, and the river is not fooled by his insincerity. After all, over the years, man has used, exploited, and taken from the river. He has depended on the Ohio for travel and mobility, for food and subsistence, for profit and livelihood, and for rest and relaxation. Then in return, he turns his back on it and builds concrete walls to keep it away and out of sight. He diverts his own personal waste and that of his fellow townsmen directly into the river’s very soul. He poisons it with his industrial toxins and then complains when his drinking water tastes like chlorine. And he litters its banks and tributaries with his unwanted solid refuse, because he knows that the river will eventually deal with it. Perhaps it’s not vengeance after all. Perhaps this self-catharsis is really self-healing and self-mitigating. When the fish come back to the river, the people do, too. And another generation of river appreciation takes hold. Time will only tell, but despite the repetitious trends of history, there is hope and promise.

There is a new generation of Ohio River consumer, a new environmentally correct commerce and industrial mind set, a new generation of pleasure boater and outdoorsman, a new page of solid waste ethics and opportunities, cleaner burning coal, and more benign gaseous and liquid discharges.

This renewed interest and appreciation of the Ohio River is well underway, and it is showing itself in the form of contemporary postcards. Big city riverfront scenes, excursion steamboats and modern diesel party boats, river scenery, river architecture, scenery of the working river, Tall Stacks™, and river recreation and history are just a few examples of the subject matter available now. These postcard views of contemporary Ohio River scenes are virtually everywhere along the 981-mile length of our national history and heritage.

More times than not, the images that really appeal to the senses and project that warm pleasurable sensation of a better time or good old days long past are in fact images of places and objects no longer in existence. The only reminder of that particular scene or object is the card in hand. Unfortunately the historic resources along the Ohio River are disappearing at an exponential rate, sometimes faster than it takes to advance the film in the camera. The medium of postcard documentation of Ohio River history is a very real and viable record of the fragile and dynamic Ohio River history and a tool for its continued, documented preservation.

The hand-colored photographic images so artfully produced by the Kraemer Art Company of Germany and Cincinnati are a thing of the past as far as contemporary production is concerned. But they are still available to collectors and to Ohio River historians. Sometimes an extra few dollars will produce a priceless image of a long-lost scene or object that is crucial to the recorded history of the river for the sake of posterity and documentation. Today’s images