Why the Ohio River Should Not Exist

The Ohio River carries more water into the Mississippi than the Mississippi itself brings to Cairo, Illinois. Yet geologically, it is one of the youngest big rivers in America. Before the Ice Age, there was no Ohio River. The Teays River drained this country instead, flowing northwest from the mountains of North Carolina across West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Then a continental ice sheet blocked it. Glacial Lake Tight filled the valleys of southern Ohio, overflowed, and cut new channels along the edge of the ice. Those channels, joined to pieces of older rivers, became the Ohio River we know today.