The Allegheny River: Watershed to the Nation
By Charlie ‘Catman’ Redeye
She is born in Pennsylvania at a place called the “Triple Divide”. Where the Allegany, Sweden, 2nd Ulysses townships join, at an altitude of 2,520 feet, lies a relatively flat hill about eight hundred feet long and four hundred feet wide.
Known as the “Triple Divide” to geologists and the “Watershed to the Nation” to locals, the hill marks the divide between waters that if you spill a bucket of water on top of that hill some of that water would flow toward Newfoundland, some toward Norfolk and the rest toward New Orleans.
Few states have a natural site showing so precisely the separation of three major drainage systems.
History was written on this river and the colorful characters who are a part of the fabric of America, started here.
The Indian Chiefs, Guyasuta, Cornplanter, Caption Jacobs, Shingas and Captain Redeye ruled and fed these people through her sustenance.
Simon Girty, George Washington, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., John Wilkes Booth, Johnny Appleseed and Rachel Carson lived and worked, fought and made fortunes along her banks.
To the Seneca, she is our Mother. She knows no borders, just destination. She can feed everybody, that’s why we call her Mother!
