To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a stamp is just a stamp. In other words, I don’t have a deeper meaning, family story, or strange connection for today’s #stampoftheday, which is a 2-cent stamp issued on October 19, 1929 (ten days before the stock market crashed) celebrating the completion of a decades-long effort to improve navigation on the Ohio River.

The 981-mile long river stretches from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois, where it empties into the Mississippi River. While it carries the most water by volume of all the Mississippi River tributaries, during dry parts of the year, parts of the river would become too shallow. In the early 1800s, this was becoming a growing problem for the merchants and farmers in the fast growing areas in the river’s watershed. Recognizing the growing importance of the inland waterways, in 1824 the U.S. Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to undertake its first non-military mission: removing snags and other obstructions to navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and by building wing dams or dikes to concentrate the Ohio River’s flow into the main channel.
In spite of these efforts, safe navigation was still sporadic and seasonal. In dry months the water was so shallow in places that was fordable only by people and horse-drawn wagons. River men and shippers came to rely on two “rises” or “tides.” The fall rise occurred in late October or November, and the spring rise between February and April. Navigation improvements were needed that would provide safe, year-round, dependable means of moving vessels on the river.

One key obstacle the Falls of the Ohio near Louisville. Steamboats could only maneuver over the falls during times of high water, which meant it was more practical for the steamboats to drop off passengers and freight on one end of the falls and transport them over land to the opposite end of the falls to another steamboat. This resulted in Louisville becoming a customary last stop for vessels on both legs of the Ohio. Merchants in both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati were not satisfied by this solution and sought instead to build a 2-mile long canal and lock system to bypass the falls. They had hoped to secure public funding for the project either from the federal government (which had built the National Road) or a state government (similarly to funding New York State provided for the Erie Canal) but those efforts failed due to opposition from merchants in Louisville and their Democratic allies.

Finally, in 1825 the Kentucky legislature authorized creation of a private company, which raised about $500,000 (about $13 million) much of it from investors in Philadelphia, but more than 20 percent from the federal government which also bought shares in the firm. The work, which started in 1826, proved to be more expensive and complicated than anticipated and the company secured another $133,500 in federal funding in 1829. The canal, which was finally completed in 1833, six years behind schedule, was much wider than the Erie Canal. Over the next few decades, the federal government gradually took control of the canal.

Despite all these improvements, the low water still made the river unnavigable for several months when the water was low. And in the decades after the Civil War, the movement of coal downriver from Pittsburgh increased greatly and the size of coal tows grew in length as powerful steam towboats pushed more and more wooden barges. To accommodate the burgeoning coal trade, the Corps studied means of providing a dependable navigation depth on the Ohio. Following an international investigation of navigation projects, engineer officers concluded that the Ohio could best be improved by constructing a series of locks and dams to create slack water pools.

The U.S. government first appropriated funds for the project in 1875 and work began in 1878. The first lock and dam at Davis Island was completed and opened to traffic in 1885. As the project proved successful, Congress later passed the Rivers and Harbors Act in 1910, authorizing the construction of a full system of locks and dams with a nine-foot navigation depth. By the time the project was completed in 1929, the Ohio River had 51 wooden dams and 600 foot by 110-foot lock chambers along the river.

In January 1929, a weekly trade magazine, Waterways Journal, suggested that two or three stamps be issued to honor the completion of the Ohio River project. They stated, “This is an engineer work which is by far the most important ever undertaken by the Government within the United States, and will directly and indirectly affect more individuals as a whole than anything our Government has ever done.”

The magazine went on to urge its readers to press the idea with the Post Office and government officials. They did, and the idea gained traction, eventually becoming the first stamp approved by the Postmaster General Walter F. Brown, who had just taken office as part of the new Hoover administration. The stamp was issued on October 19, 1929, to coincide with the start of a six-day celebration honoring the project’s completion. The locks celebrated in the stamps were greatly expanded in the 1950s to accommodate the even larger barges on the river, which is still used by massive barges hauling cargo.

There you have it. Sometimes a stamp is just a stamp and sometimes a canal is just a canal. Today is one of those days.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.