Muskingum River Navigation Historic District

About this property

The Muskingum River ( mə-SKING-(g)əm; Shawnee: Wakatamothiipi) is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 111 miles (179 km) long, in southeastern Ohio in the United States. An important commercial route in the 19th century, it flows generally southward through the eastern hill country of Ohio. Via the Ohio, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed. The river is navigable for much of its length through a series of locks and dams. The Muskingum is formed at Coshocton in east-central Ohio by the confluence of the Walhonding and Tuscarawas rivers. It flows in a meandering course southward past Conesville and Dresden to Zanesville, and then southeastward past South Zanesville, Philo, Gaysport, Malta, McConnelsville, Beverly, Lowell, Stockport and Devola. It joins the Ohio at Marietta. Along its course the Muskingum collects Wills Creek near Conesville; Wakatomika Creek at Dresden; the Licking River at Zanesville; Moxahala Creek at South Zanesville; and Wolf Creek near Beverly. The name Muskingum derives from the Shawnee word mshkikwam 'swampy ground'. In Lenape Muskingum was taken to mean 'elk's eye' by folk etymology, from mus 'elk' + wəshkinkw 'its eye'. Moravian missionary David Zeisberger wrote that the Muskingum River was called Elk's Eye "because of the numbers of elk that formerly fed on its banks, these animals being found there even at the present time [1779-1780]..." Historically, it was also the name of a large Wyandot town along the river. As part of an expedition to assert French dominance throughout the entire Ohio valley, on August 15, 1749, a leaden plate claiming the region for France was buried at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers by Pierre Joseph Céloron. Noted frontier explorer Christopher Gist reached the Big Sandy Creek tributary of the river on December 4, 1751. Traveling downriver, he recorded arriving on December 14 at the western Wyandot town of Muskingum, at present-day Coshocton. There he remained for the following month. Marietta was founded in 1788 as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory, at the mouth of the Muskingum River on the Ohio River. The Big Bottom Massacre occurred along its banks in 1791. Zanesville was settled by European Americans in 1799 at the site where Zane's Trace crossed the Muskingum at the mouth of the Licking River. Later, the National (Cumberland) Road crossed the Muskingum at Zanesville. In the mid-19th century the Muskingum was an important commercial shipping route, with dams and locks controlling the water level to allow boats to travel up and down the river. With the decrease in use of water-based transportation in Ohio by the 1920s, the locks fell into disrepair.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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