By Bill Doolittle Photos By Duckworth & John Nation
Filmmaker Morgan Atkinson plunks us right down at moment the Ohio River changed. It happened – and happened fast – when the land beyond the Alleghenies was opened for settlement and people poured down the Ohio to find new homes, open new businesses and create new lives.
Before that, the river had simply flowed undisturbed for thousands of years. Not doing much of anything. Just cruising along, low and slow in some seasons, then flooding fast and wild in others. But, Atkinson notes in his new film This is the Ohio; Life Death Rebirth of The Beautiful River, the newcomers – ethnic-European Americans – had other plans. They thought the river could be controlled. And put to great use.
And so, This is the Ohio opens with a crowd of politicians and dignitaries ringing a big riverboat bell to celebrate the completion of a chain of 52 dams linked along the 981 miles length of the Ohio River -- from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River – effectively opening the river for every manner of commerce.
“Sure, they’re happy – and who can blame them,” notes the film’s narrator Andy Pyle. “Controlling the Ohio has been the goal since the first European explorers came upon it in the 1500’s.
“Of course, indigenous people had been living along the Ohio for many centuries, and controlling the Ohio wasn’t on their agenda. They pretty much let it be. They fished from it, and traveled on it, and worshipped it. and called it the Beautiful River. They had no plan for controlling it – but the newcomers sure did.”
And with that, the motion picture leaps into motion.
Tinkly banjo and riverboat music shifts to a fast snare, in quick time, taking us right up to today – with old black and white newsreel film jumping straight to vivid color, with millions of gallons of water shooting through modern dam portals – all signaling a marvel of civil engineering is about to be revealed.
And it is. Today, the original 52 dams in the chain have been consolidated to 20 huge dams and locks controlling billions of gallons of water to keep zillions of tons of cargo moving. Long, deeply-loaded barges travel America’s industrial heartland --- and they don’t stop.
“This job is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” says Jay Rickwood, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the massive system of locks and dams on the Ohio. “In my mind I see the river as an Interstate. It’s very utilitarian. And my job is to see that commerce keeps moving at all times.”
Compared to highways, the riverways are “almost invisible,” says Tyler Kelly, author of the book Holding Back the River.
“Most Americans have very little interaction with rivers,” Kelly explains. “Even people who live beside the river. They know there’s a barge here and there, but they don’t understand where the barge is coming from, where it’s going, what it’s carrying. Not to mention everybody who lives inland that thinks everything travels on a semi-trailer truck. You are on a living river that really is not inclined to stay where we tell it too. It’s really quite remarkable.”
Remarkable to Atkinson, too.
“As I began to get deeper into the project, it became very clear to me how essential the river is for our economy, not just in America, but in the world,” says the Louisville filmmaker. “So you’re not going to get rid of barge traffic. You’re not going to shut it down and make it a recreational lake. But you do want to have the other aspect to it, too – the balance between business and recreation is important.”
And he found it. Just as he had discovered the business side of the of the Ohio River story, Atkinson also found the natural side the story. And it is just as remarkable.
Catchin’ any?
On a rocky outcropping at the edge of the river we meet Rev. Lee Payne, president of Louisville’s Audubon Society, and a director of the Beckham Bird Club, who is doing his favorite thing – talking about birds.
“The birds that are drawn to the river, it’s just amazing,” Payne says. “To see all the birds from all over the world that are coming to our river, to rest, or to fuel up.”
And the colors the birds bring to the riverway astonishes the birder. “Colors you can’t even see in a painting, colors that are just magnificent.” Right here on the Ohio River. Today.
“It’s thriving, without a doubt,” says Payne. “There’s always a new species of bird showing up at the river. All the time. More than 250 species.
“Why are we getting them?” he asks, rhetorically. The answer is easy to spot. The camera finds a heron, standing in the shallows, pointing a long beak into the water and coming out with a fish. “You can sit here at the river and watch all these raptors and birds catch all these fish, all day long.”
But who knew?
“The rivers in some ways have a public relations problem,” says Kelly, the author. “They’ve become so industrialized. They’ve become a place you don’t go to for fun. Because I’m not going to go to where there’s a burning chimney over there. I’m going to go to the park. To the lake.”
Atkinson’s film is kind of cool like that. It’s got barges AND birds.
It’s not a sob to old times, or a cheer for a modern era. Not a sledgehammer pounding polluters. Or a moral salute to naturalists ever fighting greed.
If it’s a surprise there are so many barges, it’s also a surprise how many fish birds can catch.
And maybe, this reviewer thinks, a clue to what direction the river may be headed. The film notes that a few decades ago the Ohio River was called the most polluted river in America. But we can see it is visibly better now. That bad old Big Government – maybe its regulations are making a difference. And the evil Environmental Protection Agency, maybe not really evil, after all. Or maybe we’ve all just decided not to dump so much stuff in the river.
Watch out for that Devil-Jack!
One interesting thing about This is the Ohio is that while it’s a documentary, it feels more like a film. Entertaining. Light, at times. With splashes of color in what could have been a very gray picture.
There’s the story of a 19th Century artist who traveled the Ohio for two years, making sketches. Then he built a barn and painted out all his sketches on a long roll of paper (He said it was three miles long, when it was probably only a quarter mile long. But still.) Anyhow, the artist set the scroll up on end and mechanically scrolled it behind him on stage as he told his tales of the Ohio River. The show traveled all over, and supposedly was even seen by Queen Victoria, in London.
That’s a good one. And so is the story of a young French naturalist named Rafinesque, who traveled down the Ohio, seeking to document the birds of the region for an important new scientific book. Naturally, Rafinesque visited America’s famed naturalist and painter John James Audubon, in Henderson, Ky. Audubon told Rafinesque about an amazing new species he had discovered – a 10-foot long Devil-Jack Diamond-Fish, with scales so tough they were bullet-proof. Rafinesque included the bird in his book Ichthydogia Ohiensis, published in Europe.
Very interesting. But have you ever seen a 10-foot long Devil-Jack Diamond-Fish?
Neither had Audubon.
Atkinson says stories like that are the product of a happy working collaboration with narrator Andy Pyle, a Louisville actor (“who sounds the way I’d like to sound,” says Atkinson), and the film’s editor, Steve Hurst, a senior editor at Videobred.
“Rather than exclude anything that wasn’t strictly germane to the theme of the piece, we purposely tried to include the colorful things,” says Atkinson. “Steve found wonderful historic footage, like those people ringing the bell, and we just wanted it for the film. We’d say, that’s a great little nugget. We’re going to find a spot for it.”
The result is a 60-minute film, with about 20 minutes of stuff that might not be essential – but makes the movie sing.
The idea for This is the Ohio grew from Atkinson’s association with David Wicks, who had helped produce a previous Atkinson project about Beargrass Creek, and is one of the funders of the Ohio River film.
This is the Ohio will air at various times on KET, and in cities along the Ohio. It is scheduled for a live viewing outdoors July 11 at the Big Four Bridge lawn. Free, and starting around sunset.
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