River Navigation History

The evolution of river navigation and public access to rivers.

This section concerns the history of river usage and accessibility. Its purpose to help you understand how rivers were used in the past, what their legal status was, and how this affects modern uses and laws.

Pirates conducted "business" along waterways

Commercial navigability of rivers sometimes included nefarious deeds

The federal government holds in trust for the people any river that is navigable and could be navigated for commercial purposes, which could mean sending heavy barges down the Columbia River, a hired raft down the Colorado, or even stolen goods along the Ohio or Mississippi rivers. It's all commericial--from a certain point of view.

Pirates lurked along the shores of the Great Lakes and some of the major rivers of nineteenth-century America, hoping to redesignate the ownership of goods being shipped along the waterways. Their impressive success in some quarters reflects the amount of commercial traffic on the rivers, a clear indicator that a currently navigable river also has a history of commercial navigability.

Even if neither merchants nor pirates may currently peddle their wares along some rivers that are still navigable, if only by canoe or kayak, their historic use for such purposes makes them public property, and the public has a right to access them.

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