But a lot of people…
The Mississippi River Basin includes far western PA, the western slope of the Appalachian range. The naming of bodies of water, like other natural features of Earth, is inherently flawed because water is all one system, essentially. And because people name things for complicated reasons. There’s a Green River a few miles from me which empties into the Connecticut which empties into Long Island Sound. And the number of Mill Rivers in this area is legion.
Found something a bit interesting on Google Maps: the Ohio River meets the Mississippi River in Cairo, IL, and is flowing almost due east when flowing into it. It also appears to be bigger (or at least wider) than the Mississippi River itself, before the two meet.
The Illinois River flows nearly northeast into the Mississippi.
Which was exactly my point. By definition, the basin of a river is larger than the river itself.
CoPilot affirms your hypothesis:
At their confluence near Cairo, Illinois, the Ohio River is actually larger than the Mississippi River in terms of volume flow rate. The Ohio River contributes more water than the Mississippi at this point, with a flow rate of approximately 7,960 cubic meters per second, compared to the Mississippi’s 5,897 cubic meters per second
It appears, then, the Mississippi River dumps into the Ohio River, and not vice-versa. So why didn’t they name it the Ohio River after their confluence?
Again, from CoPilot:
However, the Mississippi River is still considered the main river because it is longer and has a larger drainage basin
I would also hazard a guess that New Orleans was founded before any Europeans figured out that the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers converged, and the Mississippi was considered the ‘main’ channel, while the Ohio was a tributary.
Just a guess, however.
The Mississippi was in French territory. The Ohio was in British/US territory. Politically, they had to be separate rivers until 1803.
That’s an excellent point. So the French won a small battle, at least.
Lindberg went 55+ hours without sleep for that flight. It’s 1927, 5-10 years before the introduction of Pervitin and Benzo inhalers, but I’ve always suspected that he was on something. Cocaine? Ephedrine?
When I look at the map, the Mississippi looks to be flowing about 89° while the Ohio appears to be on a course of about 145°, so the Mississippi is almost due east and the Ohio is SE.
Also, I learned a long time ago that “Cairo” is a major shibboleth, not pronounced at all like you would expect.
This is what they used in the trenches 10 years earlier. Basically caffeine and cocaine.
I don’t think it helps with the need to sleep, but at one point strychnine was used in minute doses to stimulate muscular activity.
If that’s the criterion, though, then the river should be considered to continue west from St. Louis up towards Montana, with the river coming from the north in Wisconsin being the tributary.
Actually, that’s the case pretty much however one defines which river is “main” and which is “tributary”.
The Mississippi rises in Minnesota. No part of Wisconsin is on the right bank of the Mississippi.
So, what’s the history of the discovery of the Mississippi, and the founding of New Orleans: when did they connect the dots?
The Mississippi got its name from Native Americans and the French in (now) Minnesota. In the 1680s, the French navigated from there down to the parts explored much earlier by the Spanish (then called the Espíritu Santo) to the future site of New Orleans. Of course, Native Americans had probably been making the trip for centuries.
The Mississippi river leaks out of the onboard water tank of a motor home in north-western Minnesota and then flows northward for something like 30 or 40 miles before turning east and then southeast. The northernmost point of its flow is about 13 miles northward of the headwaters.
Oh, and it’s probably already in this thread somewhere, but the Mississippi River flows uphill. That is to say, the head of the Mississippi is closer to the center of the Earth than its mouth is. This is due to centrifugal force from the rotation of the Earth.
Centrifugal force is the reason that the head of the Mississippi is closer to the center of the Earth than the mouth is. It’s also why it can flow in that direction.
If the Earth were (somehow) a rotating sphere or a non-rotating oblate ellipsoid, it would flow in the opposite direction.
Interesting fact, indeed.