(08-27-2018 09:31 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(08-27-2018 08:25 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(08-27-2018 06:18 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  There are a number of quirks up and down the Mississippi as the channel has shifted over the years.

Same with the Ohio River and the Kentucky/Indiana/Missouri borders.

No. Totally different.

According to the Northwest Ordinance, the entire Ohio River belongs to Kentucky. A Supreme Court decision in 1820 placed this border at the Low Water mark for the River. After they dammed the Ohio (1910-1925), the river level rose in most places. Kentucky used this to increase its claim, but in 1980 another Supreme Court decision put the boundary at the 1792 Low Water mark.

This would seem to make room for a situation like on the Mississippi. But the fact is the Ohio never shifted course like the Mississippi did because the vast majority of the Ohio has hills right up to the river (unlike the Mississippi River). The only major exceptions were where they founded cities - Cincinnati is by far the largest flat area on the river, followed by Evansville, Portsmouth, Lunken (now a neighborhood of Cincy), Lawrenceburg (now a Cincy suburb), Paducah, Owensboro, Huntington, Cairo, and to a lesser extent, Louisville and Pittsburgh (which grew big more due to their strategic locations rather than their flat land). None of those areas (to my knowledge) has any parts of Kentucky that are North of the river.

Because the Indiana-Kentucky border is defined as the low-water mark on the north bank of the Ohio River as of 1792, and because the river changed course as a result of the New Madrid earthquake of 1812, a small portion of Henderson County (approximately 4 miles (6 km) long and 1 mile (1.6 km) wide), lies north of the current course of the river in what would appear to be part of Indiana. Both the Bi-State Vietnam Gold Star Bridges and the Ellis Park Race Course horse racing track are located entirely within Kentucky. The racetrack uses Indiana's 812 area code despite officially being located in Kentucky.