Map of the watersheds of the Great Miami River, to the west, and Little Miami River, to the east.
The
Great Miami River (also called the
Miami River) is a tributary of the
Ohio River, approximately
long, in southwestern
Ohio in the
United States.
The Great Miami flows through
Dayton,
Piqua,
Troy, and
Sidney.
The river is named for the
Miami, an
Algonquian-speaking
Native American people who lived in the region during the early days of European settlement.
The region surrounding the Great Miami River is known as the
Miami Valley, an economic-cultural region centered primarily on the
Greater Dayton area.
Course
The main course of the Great Miami River rises from the outflow of
Indian Lake in
Logan County, about South-East of the village of
Russells Point, approximately South-East of
Lima. Indian lake is an artificial
reservoir which receives the flow from the North and South forks of the Great Miami River. It flows South and South-West, past
Sidney, and is joined by
Loramie Creek in northern
Miami County. It flows south past
Piqua and
Troy, and through
Taylorsville Dam near
Tipp City and
Vandalia. It continues through
Dayton, where it is joined by the
Stillwater and the
Mad rivers and
Wolf Creek.
From Dayton it flows South-West past
Miamisburg,
Middletown and
Hamilton in the South-Western corner of Ohio. In South-Western
Hamilton County it is joined by the
Whitewater River approximately upstream from its mouth on the
Ohio River, just East of the
Ohio-
Indiana state line, approximately West of
Cincinnati. The river meanders across the Ohio-Indiana border near
Lawrenceburg, Indiana in the last two miles before reaching its mouth approximately 1/4 mile east of the border in Ohio.
Natural and human history
The
Miami and Erie Canal, which connected the Ohio River with
Lake Erie, was built through the Great Miami watershed. The first portion of the canal, from
Cincinnati to
Middletown was operational in 1828, and extended to Dayton in 1830. Water from the Great Miami fed into the canal. . A later extension to the canal, the Sidney Feeder, drew water from the upper reaches of the Great Miami from near
Port Jefferson and
Sidney. The canal served as the principal route of transportation for western Ohio until being supplanted by railroads in the 1850s.
Following a catastrophic
flood in March, 1913, the
Miami Conservancy District was established in 1914 to build
dams and
levees and to
dredge and straighten channels to control flooding of the river.
Lists
Names
The
Great Miami River has also been known as:
Tributaries
