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Pittsburgh's Rivers

Author: Daniel J. Burns

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9780738545141

For centuries, the land at the forks of the Ohio River was known to the Native Americans of western Pennsylvania, but it was not until 1753 that a British officer named George Washington surveyed the area for Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia. He described the land as well timbered and convenient for building, and with that, the first community at the site of modern-day Pittsburgh was established. Over the next two and a half centuries, Pittsburgh changed from a small settlement in the Pennsylvania wilderness to a city that has flourished because of, and continues to be identified by, its surrounding rivers. The Allegheny, the Ohio, and the Monongahela Rivers have played an inimitable role in the industrial growth of America as they have provided for the movement of coal, lumber, and steel to the Pittsburgh region and beyond. Pittsburghs Rivers highlights the immeasurable contributions these three rivers have made to the area both economically and socially. For centuries, the land at the forks of the Ohio River was known to the Native Americans of western Pennsylvania, but it was not until 1753 that a British officer named George Washington surveyed the area for Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia. He described the land as well timbered and convenient for building, and with that, the first community at the site of modern-day Pittsburgh was established. Over the next two and a half centuries, Pittsburgh changed from a small settlement in the Pennsylvania wilderness to a city that has flourished because of, and continues to be identified by, its surrounding rivers. The Allegheny, the Ohio, and the Monongahela Rivers have played an inimitable role in the industrial growth of America as they have provided for the movement of coal, lumber, and steel to the Pittsburgh region and beyond. Pittsburghs Rivers highlights the immeasurable contributions these three rivers have made to the area both economically and socially.

Rivers in History

Author: Christof Mauch

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2008-07-27

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0822973413

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Throughout history, rivers have run a wide course through human temporal and spiritual experience. They have demarcated mythological worlds, framed the cradle of Western civilization, and served as physical and psychological boundaries among nations. Rivers have become a crux of transportation, industry, and commerce. They have been loved as nurturing providers, nationalist symbols, and the source of romantic lore but also loathed as sites of conflict and natural disaster.Rivers in History presents one of the first comparative histories of rivers on the continents of Europe and North America in the modern age. The contributors examine the impact of rivers on humans and, conversely, the impact of humans on rivers. They view this dynamic relationship through political, cultural, industrial, social, and ecological perspectives in national and transnational settings. As integral sources of food and water, local and international transportation, recreation, and aesthetic beauty, rivers have dictated where cities have risen, and in times of flooding, drought, and war, where they've fallen. Modern Western civilizations have sought to control rivers by channeling them for irrigation, raising and lowering them in canal systems, and damming them for power generation. Contributors analyze the regional, national, and international politicization of rivers, the use and treatment of waterways in urban versus rural environments, and the increasing role of international commissions in ecological and commercial legislation for the protection of river resources. Case studies include the Seine in Paris, the Mississippi, the Volga, the Rhine, and the rivers of Pittsburgh. Rivers in History is a broad environmental history of waterways that makes a major contribution to the study, preservation, and continued sustainability of rivers as vital lifelines of Western culture.

Tonight in the Rivers of Pittsburgh

Author: Brian Lee Weakland

Publisher: Word Assn Pub

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 9781595712615

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When Brock Bailey's limousine crashes through a bridge railing and disappears into Pittsburgh's murky Monongahela River, the popular Pennsylvania governor is presumed to be dead. Intensive rescue efforts produce four mangled bodies, but the Mon River does not yield a governor. Left behind are a very public and ruthless son, a very private mistress and the prize they both crave: Bailey's Keystone Oil fortune. The governor's disappearance becomes an obsession of Bailey's hometown newspaper editor and a bumbling state police commissioner. What they learn is a Bailey family secret so shocking and devastating that one tries to exploit it and the other hesitates to publish it. Tonight in the Rivers of Pittsburgh exposes the turmoil and duplicity of Pennsylvania's political power family from the heinous kidnapping that propelled Brock Bailey to the governorship, to the forbidden young woman who dominated his hidden life, to his rudderless son, thrust into the political void caused by the governor's reported demise. The story of Bailey's legacy winds through the remote Allegheny National Forest, to the State Capitol in Harrisburg, through the Gettysburg Battlefield and Philadelphia and past all whistle-stops in between. Meanwhile, the nation's most baffling political mystery floats lifelessly down the rivers of Pittsburgh.

Urban Rivers

Author: Stephane Castonguay

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2012-05-10

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 082297794X

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Urban Rivers examines urban interventions on rivers through politics, economics, sanitation systems, technology, and societies; how rivers affected urbanization spatially, in infrastructure, territorial disputes, and in flood plains, and via their changing ecologies. Providing case studies from Vienna to Manitoba, the chapters assemble geographers and historians in a comparative survey of how cities and rivers interact from the seventeenth century to the present. Rising cities and industries were great agents of social and ecological changes, particularly during the nineteenth century, when mass populations and their effluents were introduced to river environments. Accumulated pollution and disease mandated the transfer of wastes away from population centers. In many cases, potable water for cities now had to be drawn from distant sites. These developments required significant infrastructural improvements, creating social conflicts over land jurisdiction and affecting the lives and livelihood of nonurban populations. The effective reach of cities extended and urban space was remade. By the mid-twentieth century, new technologies and specialists emerged to combat the effects of industrialization. Gradually, the health of urban rivers improved. From protoindustrial fisheries, mills, and transportation networks, through industrial hydroelectric plants and sewage systems, to postindustrial reclamation and recreational use, Urban Rivers documents how Western societies dealt with the needs of mass populations while maintaining the viability of their natural resources. The lessons drawn from this study will be particularly relevant to today's emerging urban economies situated along rivers and waterways.

Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained

Author: Martin Knoll

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0822981599

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Many cities across the globe are rediscovering their rivers. After decades or even centuries of environmental decline and cultural neglect, waterfronts have been vamped up and become focal points of urban life again; hidden and covered streams have been daylighted while restoration projects have returned urban rivers in many places to a supposedly more natural state. This volume traces the complex and winding history of how cities have appropriated, lost, and regained their rivers. But rather than telling a linear story of progress, the chapters of this book highlight the ambivalence of these developments. The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting. At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.

Devastation and Renewal

Author: Joel A. Tarr

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2004-08-11

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0822972867

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Every city has an environmental story, perhaps none so dramatic as Pittsburgh's. Founded in a river valley blessed with enormous resources-three strong waterways, abundant forests, rich seams of coal-the city experienced a century of exploitation and industrialization that degraded and obscured the natural environment to a horrific degree. Pittsburgh came to be known as "the Smoky City," or, as James Parton famously declared in 1866, "hell with the lid taken off."Then came the storied Renaissance in the years following World War II, when the city's public and private elites, abetted by technological advances, came together to improve the air and renew the built environment. Equally dramatic was the sweeping deindustrialization of Pittsburgh in the 1980s, when the collapse of the steel industry brought down the smokestacks, leaving vast tracks of brownfields and riverfront. Today Pittsburgh faces unprecedented opportunities to reverse the environmental degradation of its history. In Devastation and Renewal, scholars of the urban environment post questions that both complicate and enrich this story. Working from deep archival research, they ask not only what happened to Pittsburgh's environment, but why. What forces-economic, political, and cultural-were at work? In exploring the disturbing history of pollution in Pittsburgh, they consider not only the sooty skies, but also the poisoned rivers and creeks, the mined hills, and scarred land. Who profited and who paid for such "progress"? How did the environment Pittsburghers live in come to be, and how it can be managed for the future?In a provocative concluding essay, Samuel P. Hays explores Pittsburgh's "environmental culture," the attitudes and institutions that interpret a city's story and work to create change. Comparing Pittsburgh to other cities and regions, he exposes exaggerations of Pittsburgh's environmental achievement and challenges the community to make real progress for the future. A landmark contribution to the emerging field of urban environmental history, Devastation and Renewal will be important to all students of cities, of cultures, and of the natural world.

Water Resources of the Pittsburgh Area, Pennsylvania

Author: Max Noecker

Publisher:

Published: 1954

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13:

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Pittsburgh's Bridges

Author: Todd Wilson PE

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2015-10-26

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1439653895

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Pittsburgh's Bridges takes a comprehensive look at the design, construction, and, sometimes, demolition of the bridges that shaped Pittsburgh, ranging from the covered bridges of yesterday to those that define the skyline today. Pittsburgh is the "City of Bridges," and what remarkable bridges they are! The area's challenging topography of deep ravines and mighty rivers - the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio - set the stage for engineers, architects, and contractors to conquer the terrain with a variety of distinctive spans. Many were designed to be beautiful as well as functional. While other cities may have one signature bridge, Pittsburgh has such a wide variety that no single bridge can represent it.

The River Ran Red

Author: David P. Demarest

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2014-04-10

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 082298010X

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On July 6, 1892, violence erupted at the Carnegie Steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, when striking employees and Pinkerton detectives hired to break the strike exchanged gunfire along the shore of the Monongahela River. The skirmish left some dozen dead, led to a congressional investigation, sparked a nearly successful assassination attempt on Carnegie Steel executive Henry Clay Frick, and altered the course of the American labor movement. The River Ran Red recreates the events of that summer using firsthand accounts and archival material, including excerpts from newspapers and magazines, reproductions of pen-and-ink sketches and photographs made on the scene, passages from the congressional investigation, and poems, songs, and sermons from across the country. Contributions by outstanding scholars provide the background for understanding the social and cultural aspects of the strike, as well as its violence and repercussions. Written to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the strike, The River Ran Red records and contextualizes public and personal reactions to one of the most important events in labor history, the reverberations of which are still felt today.

Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2005-04-04

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0309181313

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The city of Pittsburgh and surrounding area of southwestern Pennsylvania face complex water quality problems, due in large part to aging wastewater infrastructures that cannot handle sewer overflows and stormwater runoff, especially during wet weather. Other problems such as acid mine drainage are a legacy of the region's past coal mining, heavy industry, and manufacturing economy. Currently, water planning and management in southwestern Pennsylvania is highly fragmented; federal and state governments, 11 counties, hundreds of municipalities, and other entities all play roles, but with little coordination or cooperation. The report finds that a comprehensive, watershed-based approach is needed to effectively meet water quality standards throughout the region in the most cost-effective manner. The report outlines both technical and institutional alternatives to consider in the development and implementation of such an approach.