To plan a trip along "Ohio's Great Corridor" visit here: http://www.miamiconservancy.org/recreation/planatrip.asp

 

No link for article.

Unfortunately, the smaller cities on the river are 'old run-down' cities.  But our society prefers 'new, never lived in' places.

 

Yes, the river should be a major central avenue for these cities.  But who wants to live in some of these:  Middletow, Hamilton, Franklin, etc?  Once wealthy, these cities have been poor for some time.  As a result, most people have left.  The school systems are in terrible shape.  Families with children want a good school district, and similar socio-economic people around. 

 

Economic developement for all these cities has shifted to I-75.  That's where all the attention and money are going.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I think redeveloping the river is a great idea.  It should be vigorously pursued.  It's just that the effort faces a LOT of upstream current (pun intended)

 

Didn't Middletown make a stab at redoing its river area some 20 years ago?  It tried to dam the river to create "Lake Middletown".  It built Bicentinial Pavillion near the spot.  But somehow, the effort was abandoned before completion.

 

Maybe it's time for Middletown to take another crack at developing its riverfront.

 

(note- the Great Miami River, at least south of Dayton, has a bad reputation of being navigatable.  Apparently the undercurrents and such make it a dangerous place to canoe and boat.  The dams in Hamilton have proven this point too many times.  The dam north of Middletown broke and nobody bothered to attend to it, making it tretchorous as well)

 

Well, this is great.

 

Worse cities have turned their mudholes into attractions, so I sure we can turn the large, beautiful, Great Miami River into something spectacular, too.

 

Again, we need to make sure that we have links to major attractions in the area, such as Carrilon Park, Wright-Dunbar, Miami University Middletown and Hamilton, Sinclair, Sunwatch, Boonshoft Museum, etc. Also, the Miami County cities have historic downtowns with nice shopping areas, walkable residential, etc, so it should definitely work up there right off the bat. The rest has potential, but it will require some work.

 

Hope this goes well!

Yes, I think we need to connections between all those places.

 

The bike trail (rec trails) are nice, and my family and I enjoy them, but that is not enough to truely link these places.

 

There was a post on another thread about how townships can just "buy" a downtown by linking up with a developer.  That reference was made in connection to the now defunct Liberty Townhsip town center propossed for the I-75/ST-129 interchange (essentually the 'Hamilton city exit in central Butler county).  I think the actual post went on to say "why buy a town center when there are 2 (or more) nearby.  Now this was a very insightful post.  Most cities on the Great Miami already have sizable downtowns (previouslly built on the old Miami-Erie Canal).  These city centers are pretty run down in many cases, and efforts to revitalize them have not been exactly successful in most cases.

 

What these old cities need is a reason for the cities to be redeveloped as opposed to turning green fields into sprawl along I-75.  Maybe a revitalized recreational Great Miami River can be the impetis for this?  Sounds like the task force would like to see it happen, and so would I.

 

I would champion redevelopment along the Great Miami before I would champion any further development along I-75!

 

Since this isn't a specific development project of any sorts I'm going to move this to City Discussion.

Though not shown here, the reaches of the Great Miami south of Fairfield are quite scenic, as the river flows through a valley surrounded in most cases by high bluffs, starting south of Fernald.

 

The confluene with the Ohio is, unfortunatly, inaccessible as I think it's on the property of a big powerplant.  It's been years since I've been down there so don't recall for sure.

 

 

Southwest Ohio has a solid festival cutlure, so this plays right into that.  Good idea:

 

Besides providing the updates, organizers of Friday’s summit also challenged attendees to band together and see who can come up with the best plans for a progressive festival next summer.

 

The rules are that at least two communities have to come together to promote at least a three-day festival that involves their downtowns and encourages people to peddle or paddle between their cities.

 

Since this isn't a specific development project of any sorts I'm going to move this to City Discussion.

 

Thanks, I posted it in the development project thread because that was the only area that was specific to Southwest Ohio.  Thanks for the move.

 

I plan on linking to similar threads that discuss the riverfront development of the cities along the Great Miami (ie Dayton, Miamisburg, Hamilton, Middletown, Troy, ...).

 

I need to look into the Miami/Ohio river confluence.  Anybody know what it's like?

It actually flows in Indiana. It almost gets there at Cleves and then heads west for a bit and picks up the Whitewater before heading toward the Ohio. Shawnee Lookout Park and Lawrenceburg would seem to be your best bets for a view. There is a big power plant right there. You fly over it when leaving CVG.

The river and confluence have probably moved since it was designated the border between Ohio and Indiana.  It's also the lowest point in Ohio.

 

I took this photo in Feb 2009...the weird colors in the water came from the polarizer filter & multiple glass panes.   

    I've been there by boat many times, including overnight.

 

  About 1990, I saw what I thought were two river otters near the confluence. I do not know my animals that well, and could not positively identify them, but I later described them to a naturalist with the Hamilton County Park district. He said that I described an otter, but otters were not known to be in this area. About 8 years later river otters were confirmed in the Great Miami river.

 

  "The river and confluence have probably moved since it was designated the border between Ohio and Indiana."

 

    By law, the border was supposed to be a line "beginning at the mouth of the Great Miami..."

 

    Of course, the mouth of the Great Miami is several hundred feet wide, and today it is split by an island. In the 1790's, I think, Isreal Ludlow placed a marker near the mouth and headed north, marking the border. That line today passes through the island. There is also a marker on the CSX railroad bridge.

 

    Historically, there was a lead marker buried at the mouth of the Great Miami by Celeron when the French claimed Ohio. There is no telling where the mouth of the Great Miami might have been in Celeron's time and the lead marker has never been found, although a similar one at the mouth of the Muskingum, I think, has been found.

 

    The Great Miami loops through Indiana, with the border not easliy recognized from the water. My dad was fishing there once and was checked by an Indiana game warden.

 

    Something interesting about the water is that it is 40 feet deep in some spots, and less then 4 feet deep in some spots, in the area around the railroad bridge. It is easy to be crusing along in a power boat, with the depth finder saying 40 feet, and all of a sudden your prop is in the mud.

 

These folks are trying to buy up all the land that they can around the confluence:

http://www.oxbowinc.org/

Here's a water-level photo of the Miami Fort power plant. The confluence is to the left.

 

 

I don't think Israel Ludlow surveyed the entire Ohio/Indiana line.  That surveying effort is cited as one of the most disciplined and accurate during the compass & chain surveying period.  The main problem of course is that a compass points toward magnetic north but by law the survey line had to point to true north.  The entire Symmes Purchase was surveyed illegally using magnetic north.  There are some other areas of Ohio that are similarly surveyed using magnetic north.  So far as I know this is a situation exclusive to Ohio, since by the time Indiana was settled the feds came down hard on hack surveyors.  The whole point of the township grid was to avoid property disputes but the magnetic north surveys causes all kinds of problems.  People back east were buying land sight unseen and then getting there and the land they bought wasn't surveyed correctly. 

 

  Isreal Ludlow surveyed about half of the Indiana Line, to a point near Fort Recovery. Shortly thereafter, Isreal Ludlow's line was followed by another surveyor who set a second set of monuments. So, the south half of the line has two sets of monuments, which has caused some confusion.

 

  The method that Isreal Ludlow used is not known today, but judging from what we know of the period he probably used a magnetic compass. Magnetic compasses can be corrected to lay out a true bearing, but the accuracy is about a half of a degree at best.

 

    The Ohio Indiana line has another name, "The First Principal Meridian." It was supposed to be a true meridian, which is a true north-south line. As it was laid out, the line at the northern end deviates by about 10 miles. Given the length of the line, it is within a degree or so of being a meridian, which matches the expected accuracy of the magnetic compass.

 

  In the 1880's, I think, after some alarm about the border being severly misplaced, a survey was performed to check how close it was laid out to a true meridian. The method they used was this: two surveyors, one at the north end and one at the south end, made an observation on the same star at that same time in order to determine their longitudinal difference. They coordinated their observations by telegraph, since good clocks with the required accuracy were hard to come by. The closest telegraph station to the south end was Elizabethtown. They set some kind of monument there; I ought to go look for it to see if it's still there.

 

    There's a great big stone monument on the border, about 6 feet high, alongside U.S. 50 at state line road in Elizabethtown. Another one like it exists on the island at the confluence.

 

    "The entire Symmes Purchase was surveyed illegally using magnetic north."

 

    The Symmes Purchase was a private subdivision rather than a sale of government land. That is, Symmes purchased the whole thing at once from Congress and sold it as he saw fit. The problem with Symmes Purchase was not that his surveyors used the magnetic compass, but that Symmes sold land without laying out all the lines, sold the same land twice, tried to start over with a new layout after selling some land, lost his records in a fire, and generally wasn't a good businessman.

 

    Even so, in those days the rules of laying out land were not well defined, and governement surveyors were often chosen for their military rather than technical experience. Only later did the government issue proper written instructions, including allowance for the convergence of the meridians.

Wow, thanks for all the info guys. I'll have to check it out.

I remember hearing about that lead marker from our history classes in high school.  Cool info, fellas!

Here's a presentation from the River Summit that was held at UD about Miamisburg's Riverfront Park:

http://riversummit.udayton.edu/Miamisburg%20park%20design%20presentation%20River%20Summit.pdf

 

Also available on scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/14562971/Miamisburg-Park-Design-Presentation-River-Summit