Evansville is a town of 117,000 souls, located in the very southern "boot tip" of the state. It's just a few miles from Illinois and literally across the Ohio River from Kentucky.
To me the most interesting thing about Evansville is the Ohio River, itself. It's pretty big here, big enough to support barge traffic. Not too far up the street from where we are staying is a gravel depot. Gravel comes in our barges, gets unloaded with cranes, then leaves in trucks. I think I saw some barges with coal, but I'm not 100% sure. We walked the riverfront for about a mile, then doubled back. It's very pleasant. The river is clean and appears healthy from an ecological standpoint. There are some parks, monuments, and museums along the riverfront, as well as a WWII troop transport boat that took soldiers to Omaha Beach for D-Day. I read that the river itself, and later the state, took its name the Iroquois who lived here and call it, "OYO," which roughly translates to Great Water. Not too hard to see how we would take OYO and anglicize it to OHIO.
Just a throwaway aside; People in Ohio do not pronounce their state name with a long "O" as the first syllable, the word "Hi" as the middle, and another long "O" to wrap it up. My grandmother, who lived most of her life in the state, pronounced it like so: "Uh-Hi-Uh" with a strong emphasis on the second syllable, and the whole name said very quickly.
Evansville was founded at a horseshoe bend in the river, which makes it vulnerable to flooding. When there are heavy rains upstream, all that extra water flows rapidly towards the bend. The flow resists the turn the river bed wants it to make and barrels ahead, to the extent that it can, aiming right towards Evansville. The Army Corps of Engineers as built a levee system to protect the city, but there was a flood in 1997 during which the river crested at 47.5 feet above normal.
We've only moved the car once since we've been here. That was to go to breakfast this morning at Rosie's Diner. Otherwise, we've been walking everywhere. The AirBnB is close to downtown, a half block from the River, and the neighborhood North of us is full of big homes. They're a mish mash of styles. Some are Victorian, some are Tudor, some look like antebellum plantation homes, and some are solidly brick and squarish, a style I've always seen in a lot of midwest towns and cities. I haven't researched what industries helped build the town, but it must have been prosperous at one point.
Tomorrow, we move on to Kentucky. After that, we're thinking about Charleston WV, and then we'll hang out with my parents and sister in Central North Carolina, before heading back to PA.
