Miami River

 

(mīăm'ē, –ə) or Great Miami, river, c.160 mi (260 km) long, formed in W Ohio near Indian Lake and flowing generally SW past Dayton to the Ohio River at the Ind. line. The Miami River system has large-scale flood-control projects. The Miami and Erie Canal (c.240 mi/390 km long; opened in the 1830s) linked the upper Miami River with Lake Erie and was the principal transportation route of W Ohio until the 1850s. The Little Miami River (95 mi/152 km long) to the east and generally parallel, rises SE of Springfield and enters the Ohio River at Cincinnati.

Great Miami River
The Great Miami River near Vandalia
Origin	Indian Lake
Mouth	Ohio River at the Ohio-Indiana state line
Length	160 mi (257 km)
Source elevation	998 ft (304 m)
Mouth elevation	455 ft (138 m)
Avg. discharge	5,368 ft³/s (152 m³/s)
Basin area	5,373 mi² (13,915 km²)

The Great Miami River (also called the Miami River) is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 160 mi (257 km) long, in southwestern Ohio in the United States. The Great Miami flows through Dayton, Piqua, Troy, and Sidney.

The river is named for the Miami, an Algonquian-speaking Native American people who lived in the region during the early days of white settlement.

The region surrounding the Great Miami River is known as the Miami Valley, an economic-cultural region centered primarily on the Greater Dayton area.

Course

The main course of the river rises from the outflow of Indian Lake in Logan County, approximately 15 mi (24 km) SE of Lima. The lake is a reservoir which receives the flow from the south and north forks of the Great Miami. It flows S and SW, past Sidney, and is joined by Loramie Creek in northern Miami County. It flows south past Piqua and Troy, and through Taylorsville Dam near Tipp City and Vandalia. It continues through Dayton, where it is joined by the Stillwater and the Mad rivers and Wolf Creek.

From Dayton it flows SW past Middletown and Hamilton in the southwestern corner of Ohio. In southwestern Hamilton County it is joined by the Whitewater River approximately 5 mi (8 km) upstream from its mouth on the Ohio, on the Ohio-Indiana state line, approximately 15 mi (24 km) west of Cincinnati.

Natural and human history

The Miami and Erie Canal, which connected the Ohio River with Lake Erie, was built through the Great Miami watershed. The first portion of the canal, from Cincinnati to Middletown was operational in 1828, and extended to Dayton in 1830. [1] Water from the Great Miami fed into the canal. [2]. A later extension to the canal, the Sidney Feeder, drew water from the upper reaches of the Great Miami from near Port Jefferson and Sidney. The canal served as the principal route of transportation for western Ohio until being supplanted by railroads in the 1850s.

Following a catastrophic flood in March, 1913, the Miami Conservancy District was established in 1914 to build dams and levees and to dredge and straighten channels to control flooding of the river.

References

• Arthur Benke & Colbert Cushing, "Rivers of North America". Elsevier Academic Press, 2005 ISBN 0-12-088253-1

See also

• Little Miami River
• List of Ohio rivers

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