Swimming the Ohio River

Submitted by Dave Bartens

This is what I call my Brown Underwear story. When you stripped down to your underwear and swam the Ohio River your white underwear would be stained brown by the muddy river water.


We had to put a lot of thought into our first attempt to swim across the Ohio River on the Wheeling side to Wheeling Island. None of us boys, all around 16 years old, had ever attempted to swim anywhere near that far before. We didn't know of any other person who had ever actually done it before. No one to get any advice from. We were mainly worried about running out of steam out there in the middle of the river or maybe getting a bad cramp or something. We decided to find a big river log along the bank that one of us would swim with as we crossed the river to act as a rescue floatation device if we needed it. If anyone got into any trouble along the way, he could hold on to the log and float for awhile.

We knew that there was a pretty good current out there, so we picked a target spot on The Island to shoot for. We decided that if we jumped into to river around the Wheeling Terminal Railway Bridge site we would land somewhere on the tip of the North Island area. We choose the northern tip of The Island as our target because it was pretty much uninhabited back then and still is. The swim was pretty tiring but uneventful, no one had to make use of the log. Our naviguessing the current was pretty good too. It took us right to our target spot on The Island. After we rested for a little while over there we started our swim back to the Wheeling side. We ended up coming ashore somewhere north of The Fort Henry Bridge...then walked the railroad tracks along the river back up to the Wheeling Terminal Railway Bridge site to get our clothes and of course we found that swimming that muddy river had stained our underwear a golden brown. All in all, our first swim across the river was a success.

The second time we decided to swim from the mouth of Wheeling Creek to The Island. This also went well, but a couple of friends of ours showed up and wanted to try the swim we had just finished. All three of us boys were pretty tired from our first swim to The Island but we gave in and said yes we would swim with our two other buddies to The Island and back, but we would use a log just in case we couldn't make it a second time. We got half way across the river when one of our friends who was not a very good swimmer had to turn back with the log. The rest of us made it to The Island but found that we were way too tired to swim back to the mouth of Wheeling Creek. We decided the best thing to do is to walk north to the Suspension Bridge and walk back to get our clothes. After sneaking in our underwear thru backyards of The Island we reached the Suspension Bridge. We were thinking that we would cross the bridge, run around the Capitol Theater and down that road where the Steel Bridge was once located, then down to the old railroad track and back to our clothes at the mouth of Wheeling Creek. We got half way across the bridge when a police car caught us in our brown underwear. They put us into the back seat and drove us back to our clothes. They laughed at us and told us they too had done the same thing when they were young, swimming that river in their brown underwear.

Dave Bartens