Appalachia’s commercial ports help feed regional, national economy

A typical towboat on the Ohio River, like the one in the photo above, consists of 15 barges that can carry about 30,000 tons of materials — in this case coal. The tow above is navigating through the Gallipolis Waterfront in the Appalachian region of southeastern Ohio. (Adobe Stock photo by Christopher Boswell.)

By Phillip J. Obermiller and Thomas E. Wagner 

Although not readily recognized for it, the federal Appalachian region hosts many busy ports. They are an important part of the region’s transportation network, serving national and international markets for coal, steel, chemicals, cement, grain, fertilizer, limestone, petroleum products, sand and gravel, and other bulk commodities such as lumber and wood chips.  

Appalachia’s waterborne commerce is conducted primarily by means of “tows” or linked steel barges pushed by diesel workboats. 

In northern Appalachia many of the ports are aggregated into port districts with the largest being the Port of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky which includes five Appalachian counties, the Huntington Tri-State Port, and the

The ports of Ashland, Kentucky, top photo, and Portsmouth, Ohio, are part of the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky port districts. (AdobeStock photos.)

Mid-Ohio Valley Port. The Pittsburgh Port District, for example, is the nation’s fifth busiest and covers 13 counties including 200 navigable river miles on the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers. The ports at Ashland, Kentucky, and Portsmouth, Ohio, are part of the Port of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky district, while those at Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Marietta, Ohio, are in the Mid-Ohio Valley district. 

With a blend of commercial and recreational commerce, ports in Southern Appalachia are also important to the regional economy. In Appalachian Alabama, for instance, the Port of Decatur handles a large portion of the more than five million tons of river freight that move along the Tennessee River. About 55 miles downriver is the Guntersville Terminal, a major port with barge docks, liquid storage, rail access, and warehousing. 

In Appalachian Tennessee, Chattanooga is a significant port on the Tennessee River with multimodal logistics that include barge, rail, and truck, serving various industries, including steel processing. Chattanooga also hosts two of the largest river cruise companies in the United States, the American Queen Voyages and American Cruise Lines. In addition to handling bulk cargos, the Port of Knoxville offers bunker fuel supply, ship maintenance and repair, and customs clearance for international shipping. The nearby Burkhart Enterprises has a barge facility that transfers approximately 500,000 tons of bulk commodities per year.  

Similar to Chattanooga, the port at Marietta, Ohio, is an example of both commercial and recreational use of the region’s waters. Marietta Industrial Enterprises handles large tows of steel, grain, and pipe, while the city’s Ohio River Sternwheel Festival, where a barge provides the main concert stage, attracts large numbers of paddlewheel boats and tourists annually. 

The Ohio River Sternwheel Festival at Marietta, Ohio, in 2007. (Photo by Mike Sharp, Wikimedia Commons.)

Upriver from Marietta, Huntington, West Virginia, was specifically designed at its founding in 1871 to be a rail-to-river transfer point for the coal and timber carried by the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad. Today the Port of Huntington Tri-State, extending 200 miles along Ohio, Kanawha, and Big Sandy rivers, remains an important part of the regional economy. 

The Island Creek Coal tipple near Huntington, West Virginia, used gravity to transfer coal directly from trains to barges in 1909. (Photo by Robert Y. Spence, courtesy of the West Virginia Encyclopedia.)

Older than Huntington, the Port of Erie’s history extends across the 19th century. With a natural harbor on Lake Erie protected by Presque Isle, the port built five warships for the War of 1812 including Oliver Hazard Perry’s USS Niagara. It went on to build the USS Michigan, the Navy’s first iron-hulled warship in 1843. By the end of the century, Erie had become a busy port for boarding excursion boats. Today it hosts the busy Carmeneuse Terminal for bulk cargos and Donjon Shipbuilding and Repair offering ship maintenance and barge building. 

The sidewheeler City of Erie, ran between Cleveland, Ohio, Erie Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York, in the early 1900s. Serving mainly tourists, it was known as “The Honeymoon Special” because many couples onboard were bound for Niagara Falls. (Image by William Henry Jackson, Library of Congress.) 

Appalachia’s long history of involvement in shipping is not just a matter of curiosity. The region’s ports play a key role in commercial transportation even as the economics of bulk shipping evolve. The Port of West Virgina in Follansbee, West Virginia, for instance, is currently under development on the site of a former steel mill. The location has nearly 900 acres with 8,000 feet of river frontage and three barge docks, and is within 20 miles of Interstate 70.  

Although the creeks and rivers near Abingdon, Virginia, are more suitable for recreational use, it’s about to become a major inland port. Four hundred acres in Washington County’s Oak Park Center for Business and Industry, approximately 390 rail miles from the Port of Virginia terminals near Hampton Roads, are targeted as a railhead for moving shipping containers along the Heartland Corridor to the sea via the CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads. 

With road, river, and rail access, these multimodal facilities are the face of the future for Appalachia’s ports. 

(For more on this topic see Nick Brumfield’s “No Stranger to Blue Water: How Ports Made Modern Appalachia,” published by expatalachians.com.)

Phil Obermiller and Tom Wagner live in the Port of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky district, often cited as being among the nation's largest inland ports by volume. They are affiliated with the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati.