On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 00:21:51 -0500, "John Gaquin"
wrote:

If you head upstream on the Ohio from the Tennessee, is it navigable to
Pittsburgh? If so, how far beyond Pittsburgh is the Allegheny navigable?
That heads up into western NY.

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I don't have charts for any of that but I'm reasonably sure that the
Ohio is navigable all the way to Pittsburgh and probably part way up
the Allegheny, perhaps as far as Oil City, PA. After that it begins
to fizzle out and there is a major dam (Kinzua) about 12 miles south
of the NY border, definitely a vertical challenge for boats of any
draft. :-) The best you could hope for as far as I can tell is canoe
portages to the Susquehanna (very shallow in NY), and back down to
Chesapeake Bay or maybe Delaware Bay.

The route that does work is to go south on the Ohio to the
Mississippi, and then north to Chicago and Lake Michigan. This is a
fairly popular cruise with trawler folk, and is frequently referred to
as "the great loop".