Go ahead.

We'll do it anyway.

Ready?

Hit it!

Anyone who knows anything about Pittsburgh knows that it has three rivers.

Two of them, the Monongahela and the Allegheny.

Come together at Pittsburgh and form the Ohio.

And Pittsburgh is obviously proud of the three.

We've got a Three Rivers Stadium, Three Rivers Arts Festival, a Three Rivers Regatta, a Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, Three Rivers this and Three Rivers that.

Pittsburgh's identity is just all tied up with these three rivers.

In fact, if you look up Pittsburgh in the dictionary, it's defined by its three rivers.

Well, in this program we're going to look at these rivers and some of the Pittsburghers who live by them, work on them, play on them, and eventually end up drinking them in one form or another.

For the next hour, we're going to take a desultory, sometimes cockeyed look at these three rivers, their characteristics, and we'll talk about the mystery of that B-25 bomber that crash landed and disappeared in the Mon in 1956.

If you live in Pittsburgh, you know that the Mon is a nickname for the Monongahela.

Well, for the sake of our title, we've decided to nickname the Allegheny the Al.

Although no one really calls it that.

And we're going to call the Ohio the O, which is the Pittsburgh nickname for a hotdog place in the Oakland section of town.

But we're using it here to refer to the river.

We're calling this program the Mon, the Al, and the O. This program begins where a lot of rivers begin in late winter, when snow and ice in the mountains begin to melt and small streams start flowing down to meet other streams and bigger creeks and eventually small rivers that will become big.

Let's talk about the Allegheny for a while.

The Allegheny becomes a river in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania, near the town of Coudersport.

It flows north, crossing the state line into New York for a while, then turned south, coming into the Allegheny Reservoir.

A body of water created by the Kinzua Dam.

Some say Kinzua.

It's not far from Warren, PA.

Amid much controversy, mostly about the relocation of Native Americans of the Seneca Nation.

Kinzua was built by the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s as a flood control project.

A way to prevent disasters like the Saint Patrick's Day flood of 1936, when the Allegheny, overflowing with rain and spring runoff, nearly destroyed the city of Pittsburgh.

When the Allegheny River emerges from the Kinzua Dam, it's already a considerable river.

Just a couple miles downstream, where route 59 runs parallel to the river, there's an unusual little gas station and store run by a man named Peter Bleach.

He likes to collect jokes and funny stories.

One humorous incident happened.

Our milkman, the young fellow, was delivering milk and he was telling me about his escapades.

He told me he took his girlfriend for a ride on a boat, and they're going down river.

Downtown Warren.

The river goes right through the town, and he says his girlfriend was sitting in a canoe, and there was a cable stretch across the river.

And he grabbed ahold of the cable.

The boat kept going down there.

He was hanging on the cable and his girlfriend going down river in a boat, and he was embarrassed.

He had to drop off into the river and then swim over to the bank and then go down, get his girl.

Although Peter Bleachs his business boomed while they were building the dam.

Things are pretty slow now.

He attracts customers by decorating the outside of his gas station with funny signs, including the four big letters on top of the building.

YMBT.

Well, that's what it's for, you know, it's where the gasoline I used to have.

Like I said before, we had about 4 or 5 gasoline pumps, and that was a message.

YMBT?

Get them to stop.

And you would stop and say, hey, what's that mean?

YBMT and Id have to tell them, say it slow.

And he'd say y b m, oh yeah, they say.

Pete is also an amateur artist with samples of his work throughout his store.

He remembers when timber and logging were big business on the Upper Allegheny.

This little village is called Roger town.

Years ago, there used to be a sawmill.

And I remember, just as a real small boy, I still picture that sawmill.

Those days when they'd cut up the logs, they'd throw the leftovers outside the window, and there'd be a big pile of, slab wood.

Then in the fall, or whenever it was, when we'd get a flood on the Allegheny River, the water it back up all around and pick up the slab woods and take it down to you fellas down in Pittsburgh.

Huge flows of logs and timber don't float down the Allegheny anymore.

But with a little sense of humor, life can still be pretty amusing in the tiny settlement of Roger Town.

I tried this information before I her on this sign, I put it on a piece of cardboard about two feet square.

I put that same information.

Founded, population, altitude and total.

I had to get all that to make some kind of an impressive figure.

And then I put that sign up there.

There's still the nail right there.

You know, I waited on this customer, and then afterwards I went indoors and he happened to spot that sign there with that information and he burst out laughing like the snot running down of his nose, and it just warmed the cockles of my heart to realize that there's another intelligent person that really enjoys the humor.

And he said, boy, Pete, you're the greatest.

And so So I thought, well, he enjoyed that so much.

I made it a point to put that on this thing here at 66 down on the bottom, and it's my dad's old number.

When he worked for the Hammond Iron Works as a boilermaker.

The Upper Allegheny has some industries along its banks, like this refinery at Warren, but it's largely a recreational and scenic river.

A playground.

As it winds toward Pittsburgh, it meets other streams like Oil Creek and Oil City.

Occasionally, as cars pass over it on old metal bridges, it seems civilized.

It passes by small towns, but then flows through somewhat wild territory again, just about the time it twists and turns at Brady's Bend.

It's considered officially navigable.

By Army Corps of Engineers standards, navigable means having a depth of at least nine feet in the channel.

Joe Cogley works for Pittsburgh City Parks, but he grew up in the town of East Brady and still likes to paddle around in his canoe, taking advantage of the Allegheny near Brady's Bend.

When you take your boat out here, you don't have to worry about running around a barge that's coming up the river.

The scenic view to you is beautiful.

There's not a lot of industry and buildings along the river's edge, so you've got a lot of trees and streams and mountain laurel and rhododendrons just.

It just it's really beautiful.

It's really relaxing.

Joe remembers this river from his boyhood and says the area and the river were a little different then.

The river was different, because when we lived along the river, when I was a little boy, it was mostly farmland.

And since the early 50s and the development of this particular property, the farmland has been sold off.

And there's just all kinds of, camps and trailers along the river area.

And the population is increased here.

But not to the point that you wouldn't want to come here to enjoy yourself.

It's spectacular.

Up the lazy river, by the old mill Glen and that lazy, lazy river in the noonday sun linger in the shade of a kind old tree.

Throw away your troubles Dream a dream with me.

As the Allegheny gets closer to the city of Pittsburgh, it gets busier both with commercial traffic and lots of pleasure boats.

The word Allegheny is believed to be of Native American origin, and probably meant something like fair waters.

The fair River itself is about 325 miles long, from its headwaters up in the Allegheny Mountains to its mouth at the point in Pittsburgh it is given its name not only to those mountains, but also to the county in which Pittsburgh is located, and originally to the city on its north shore, directly across from downtown Pittsburgh.

What Pittsburghers today call the North Side was a separate city known as Allegheny, Pennsylvania until 1907, when it was forced to become part of Pittsburgh.

Whose that dreadful air?

Who was that steamboat then The Allegheny Al?

Allegheny Al.

The river on the other side of downtown Pittsburgh, the Monongahela starts in West Virginia.

Its waters have their own mountain origins, but the river begins in the small city of Fairmont, West Virginia, where two smaller rivers, the Tygart and the West Fork, come together.

Fairmont is proud of its three rivers too.

The point of land where the two rivers come together is undeveloped right now.

It sits in a small valley and allows you to imagine what Pittsburgh's point might have looked like at one time.

A woman named Adaline Piscatella lives high on the hill overlooking the three rivers of Fairmont.

She's got a view that a Pittsburgh restaurant owner would kill for.

This is the West Fork River, and that one coming down is the Tygart.

And this is where the Monongahela begins.

And of course, the three rivers join there.

Adaline Piscatella has watched the Mon coming to life below her house for over 30 years.

What does she see out on that point?

Well, not much.

A couple years ago, there was a sewer system put there, like on this side of the river to to keep the rivers cleaner.

And so the fish and wildlife can survive a little easier.

Families will come too, there on the poin you see little children and all.

And if it's late at night they build a big bonfire and they usually have these big rubber tires that they burn and, you know, they burn in a long time.

But it is beautiful and as the trees come out, just like I mentioned, it's even more beautiful.

The upper Monongahela is beautiful.

Clear, greenish blue water.

It's navigable, at least nine feet deep, for its entire length of 128 miles, ending at Pittsburgh, where it meets the Allegheny.

Some people make a big to do about the fact that the Mon is one of the rare rivers in the Northern Hemisphere that flows north.

Actually, it's just flowing from a higher elevation at Fairmont to a lower elevation of Pittsburgh.

It's essentially water running downhill.

And while you might call the Upper Allegheny a lazy river, it would be wrong to call the Mon anything but hard working.

For many years, the Monongahela was the busiest inland waterway in the world.

When Pittsburgh was the world capital of industry.

The gigantic mills in the Mon Valley were the heart of American steel manufacturing at its peak.

Airplane pilots flying from New York to Chicago at night watched for the Mon Valley as a landmark.

It glowed all night long with flames, blast furnaces, molten steel and slag being dumped.

In recent years, the area has suffered terrible economic depression.

Most of the mills are closed down and people are always looking for ideas about how to revive industry of some sort along the Monongahela shores Homestead, Pennsylvania, the home of U.S.

Steel, and the men down at the Homestead Works are sharing one last meal.

Sauerkraut and kielbasa.

A dozen beers or more 100 years of pouring slab.

They're closing down the door.

And this mill won't run no more.

On the river, there's not as much traffic as there once was.

But at 6:30 a.m.

on a very foggy Saturday morning, there's already river traffic, undoubtedly relying on radar for safe navigation.

Al Edy, a landing superintendent, is counting and checking barges tied up at the West Elizabeth Landing.

It's run by the Consolidation Coal Company, one of the biggest shippers on the the Mon today.

Boats that push barges are called tow boats, even though they actually shove the barges rather than tow them.

The Wanda B has come in to West Elizabeth this morning to get 13 barges of coal, all from mines farther up the river.

The Wanda B has orders to take this load down river about 11 miles to the Duquesne landing.

You got it.

Transporting materials like coal on the rivers is much cheaper than any other form of shipping.

Dave Kreitzer works for Consolidation Coal's River division.

He says the Mon is more than just a workplace.

The river never stops flowing.

The boats never stopped shipping.

So the river business is a seven day, a week, 24 hour job or as we call it, a lifestyle.

Most people who work on the river also live around the river and also enjoy the many recreational aspects of the river as well.

So river is not a job, but it's your life really.

On the Wanda B the front watch is building a tow.

That means Captain Lum Bady is in the pilothouse, carefully maneuvering the tow boat and working with two deckhands, John Cavallo and Ken Wilson.

The three of them make up the front watch.

They must arrange and tie together the 13 barges for Duquesne.

The barges in front of a tow boat are collectively called the tow t o w. As they build the tow, deckhands communicate with the captain over walkie talkies attached to their life vests.

The towboat pulls barges out and the deckhands secure them together with lines made of synthetic rope and metal cables called wires, that will rig the barges to each other and to the tow boat so that it can move as one single vessel.

Fishing has improved tremendously on the Mon in recent years, and fishermen in Elizabeth, PA watch as the Wanda B and her 13 barges get underway.

While the towboat can be noisy, it's remarkably quiet out on the tow.

The deckhands have to look in all the hatch covers on the barges for any signs of leaks.

The sides and bottoms of the barges are hollow to keep them afloat.

Deckhands are also responsible for keeping the barges relatively shipshape, shoveling up excess coal and such.

Each of these barges, in their standard size, made of steel, weighs about 200 tons and each holds about 900 tons of coal.

A loaded barge rides about nine feet deep in the water.

At times, the tow seems so huge that it's hard to sense movement, but the Wanda B is 14,300 tons of barges and coal, a total of over 28.5 million pounds.

A crew on a tow boat stays on board for about a week at a time.

Deckhand Ken Wilson explains the work schedule.

Well, we're, out for seven days.

You work.

We're.

Depends on what we watch on.

You have a front watch and an after watch.

This is the front watch.

It starts at 6:00 in the morning.

Works till 12.

Okay.

You work for six hours, then the after watch, which works from 12 to 6.

They come out and relieve you So then they work through 6 and then you're off.

Six.

You go to sleep.

And you, 6:00 comes round your turn to go back on watch do that for seven days.

Then you get your seven days off.

One of the biggest dangers for deckhands is the unexpected snapping of lines or wires.

Deckhand John Cavallo talks about their incredible deadly force.

Well, I've been out here when some of this riggings been broken, thats scary.

Sounds like a gun going off.

You don't know which way to turn.

That can be frightening at times.

You don't see too much.

Just happens.

When the Wanda B and her tow arrive at Duquesne, Captain Bady has to bring her in gently.

This kind of move is called flanking.

He and the deckhands will get the tow into position and then tie it off to other barges already waiting there.

In the midst of this flanking.

All of a sudden it's noon and the after watch takes over.

Bud Monahan takes over for Lum and deckhands Mike Davis and Whitey Seibert take over on the tow.

In the kitchen of the towboat Virginia Delia sets the table and gets ready to feed the front watch.

She says her cooking is easy to describe.

Plain cooking.

Nothing fancy.

I don't go in for fanciness.

Stick to the ribs cooking.

I try to make a well-balanced meal that they aren't getting a whole lot of grease and get their vegetables, and I don't believe in putting sauces on them once in a while I do, but there's more or less.

As a Pennsylvania Dutch, they stick to the ribs, cooking.

Virginia has been cooking on tow boats for over 16 years, but says she has no special affection for the Mon.

I don't have the time to get into the details of the river.

You know, I'm busy here getting the meals ready and I just look at the scenery going by that I think I would miss watching the different scenery.

Having dropped off the barges in Duquesne, the Wanda B has turned upriver again, heading for Clairton and then to a landing just above lock number three back at Elizabeth.

Deckhand Mike Davis started to work on the river because his dad worked at a lock.

I was, raised around the river.

I always liked it when I was a child.

I used to enjoy watching the boats go by and say, boy, I'd like to go for a boat ride.

Get a job on the boats.

When I was in high school, I wanted a job on the river.

And through my father, I accomplished that.

I can't really say I'm sorry.

I made a decent living off of it.

There's, jobs are scarce, And in this valley especially.

So I'm favoring a little better than a lot of the rest Thats out of work.

Like all deckhands, Mike works hard, enjoys his weeks off, and says that most people don't really know what life is like on the rivers.

They just look at us and wave and, try to figure out what we're doing, how long we stay out But I don't think, too many have any idea what goes on out here.

As she comes in at Clairton, the Wanda B will pick up some empties which ride high out of the water without the tons of coal inside.

So we're picking up six.

We're going to drop this one down.

That'll give us four together and probably have to get two up above.

There's a lot of difference between a load and empty isn't there?

But heres four.

Then we'll probably have to go up above and pick up two more someplace.

We ready, Whitey?

A lot of the empties need new rigging before they can be moved.

Eventually, after much maneuvering and re-rigging, the Wanda B heads south, pushing the empties three at a time into lock three.

Short halls like this are regular towboat business.

It's been a typical day on a towboat on the Mon.

A lot of hard work.

And like the river, the work doesn't stop.

The word Monongahela probably came from the Delaware tribe, and it's been translated to mean high banks breaking off and falling down at places, or sometimes simply falling banks.

The river banks around the city seem pretty stable today.

Most Pittsburghers say Monongahela, but you'll sometimes hear Monongahela too, mostly from out of towners and from the American heritage Dictionary, which gives Monongahela as the accepted pronunciation.

When the Mon comes together here at the point with the Allegheny, they look about the same size, but the Allegheny is swifter and provides more than twice as much water every day into the Ohio.

When the French were the first European settlers around here at Fort Duquesne, they considered the Ohio and the Allegheny as one river, which they called La Belle Riviere, or the beautiful river.

To the French, the Mon was just a tributary of the bigger river.

George Washington came to the site as a young man too, and in his journals, published in 1754, there's a footnote, he says, the Ohio and the Allegheny are the same river.

Of course, that's no longer true.

Now, once water flows past Pittsburgh's point, it becomes the Ohio.

Ohio is another word of Native American origin.

Some say it meant beautiful river to the Seneca people.

Others claim Ohio meant frothy waters.

And still others say it meant something big because the river was big.

Whatever.

The state of Ohio gets its name from the river as it flows west, and it keeps flowing west for 981 miles until it reaches Cairo, Illinois, where it flows into the Mississippi.

At downtown Pittsburgh.

The level of the Ohio as it starts is controlled by the Emsworth Locks and Dams, located about six miles downstream.

Dave Sneeburger, lock master at Emsworth, explains why the river needs locks and dams.

In order to have the water deep enough to run boats on, you have to put a dam in the river, okay, that builds the water level up, but there's no way to get over the top of the dam, so you have to put a lock in beside each dam.

This allows you to bring a boat in drain him down under control, and then let him out on the lower level of the river.

So each dam will have a lock beside it.

Sometimes there's one lock, sometimes there's two.

At Emsworth here we have two locks.

We have a 600ft chamber, and we have a 364ft chamber.

And it's just to accommodate various different sizes of boats As boats come through the locks today, passengers might find it hard to believe how low the water used to get.

Dave Sneeburger knows some of the history of the local locks and dams.

In the old days, before there were any locks on the river, the water was approximately one foot deep from here to Cincinnati, maybe two feet deep from Cincinnati to Cairo Illinois.

In the late 1800s, the Army Corps of Engineers decided that they had to put locks on these rivers or dams on these rivers to build water deep enough so they could use it.

Prior to that, you can only run on the river in the rainy season, or when the snow melt off in the early spring, late winter or early spring.

And they used to build barges and have them all ready to go with the commodity on them, and they'd throw them in and away they'd go down the river as far as they wanted to go New Orleans, Cincinnati, wherever they were taking their product.

This worked really well for about a month.

Rest of the 11 months out of the year, they couldn't use the river.

Well, now people can use the rivers all the time, thanks to locks and dams like Emsworth and all the others up and down all three rivers.

These locks are operating 24 hours a day all year long, and there's no charge for using them.

No matter whether you're paddling a canoe or piloting a riverboat.

The water upriver from a dam is called it's pool.

Pool is basically the area of water that you back up from a dam.

Okay, the Emsworth Pool extends from here up the Allegheny River to the dam at lock 2 Allegheny and up the Mon river to the dam, at lock 2 Mon River.

And that encompasses the whole point, Pittsburgh and all the mills and intakes and everything in that area.

That's Emsworth Pool.

We maintain that, and we inspect it and make sure that everything's working properly in that pool.

Although Dave knows a lot about these locks now, he says it hasn't always been that way.

Oh, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, in Mt.

Lebanon, lived here all my life, and I never even knew the rivers existed with the locks and dams until I was in college.

And I think mostly the people I talk to, when they ask, you know, what do you do for a living?

So I'm a lock operator.

They say, oh, you work with locks are your locksmith and work with keys?

So, So nobody really has a realization of that the locks were even here or what their purpose is.

Most of the people in the Pittsburgh area, which is totally dependent on the rivers, it's the main reason that Pittsburgh was even built where it is.

Don't have any idea about river commerce, River traffic.

Actually, the Pittsburgh area does have an extraordinary history of activity on the rivers.

From its earliest days, the city's been known for its river traffic, various kinds of boats, boatbuilding, and wonderful riverside celebrations.

On the south shore of the Monongahela in what's now called Station Square.

The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation has offices in the old P&LE railroad Station.

In an office that overlooks the Mon, historian and writer Walter Kidney is unrolling and organizing some old diagrams, blueprints and maps.

He knows a lot about Pittsburgh's past and the importance of her rivers.

This is where the Western River Steam Building began in 1811, and I think that's one reason why we became a big industrial center was partly that there's so much coal around here, partly because we were building steamboats, and that meant you had to make engines so forth.

You had machinery to build.

I think, you know, I think it all started working together.

And we just the industry sort of fed on itself and developed.

Older pictures of Pittsburgh show how busy the city's rivers were, both before and after the systems of locks and dams were completed.

But you had on the Monongahela since at least the 1930s, when the whole lock and dam chain was completed there, And once youve had on the Ohio River since 1929, when they completed their lock and dam chains, what's called slack water navigation.

In other words, you.

The river is divided into absolutely, absolutely level pools.

Water will flow from dam to dam in a chain, and there's no free power of water.

It's the water's absolutely level at all points.

The city was almost wiped out economically in 1817, long before there were any dams, by the fact that there was about a foot of water at the point.

They couldn't move a flatboat or anything.

Walter Kidney has stacks of old pictures showing some of the most important and famous boats in Pittsburgh history.

This is almost the first type of boat on the western river.

You see a flat boat here in the foreground might be a trading flat boat, or it might be someone's household moving.

The background, you have a keelboat, people pulling the boat upstream.

Flat boats were non returnable.

Keelboats went both ways.

Man sitting up here playing the fiddle.

There's a keeled boat trying to navigate under sail.

Here's the steamer Virginia.

Went up in a cornfield during a flood in 1910.

They used to run excursion trains to see it out there.

And here some of the excursion is walking up to it.

Here's the passenger salon of the Great Republic, photographed around 1870.

This was built Shousetown which is now Glenwillard down in Crescent Township.

The hull was built there.

It was floated up here and then a man named Charles Gering did the cabinet work and joinery for the boat, and he did one of the most extravagant jobs of any Mississippi River packet.

Packet boats transported passengers on a regular schedule.

One time.

You can get on a boat here and go to New Orleans.

In fact, somebody pointed out in 1883, they probably get on the, get on the river at Fairmont, West Virginia.

And if you were positioned in that end up in Montana and go the whole way by water, I mean, there's that linkage of steamboat lines.

In the 1920s and 30s, if you went up or down the Ohio on a packet, there's a chance.

The boat was piloted by Captain Frederick Way Jr.

Yeah, this is the Betsy-Ann I owned her from, my dad, and I owned her from 1925 up through 1932, about 8 years.

Ran her principally between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

We carried freight down here.

This is stuff piled up here on the front.

Freight all down here on the main deck.

And the passengers, we call it walking freight upstairs.

Captain Way lives now in Sewickley, not too far down the Ohio.

His home is filled with lots of riverboat books, pictures and memorabilia.

His hearth is a metal tread from the Betsy-Ann.

He remembers well those old packet boat days.

Packet had a regular schedule.

And, you got to meet all the people in all the towns.

And it was really fun.

And you were carrying passengers all the time.

So it was a different light altogether.

Totally.

They had at that time, they had a boat leaving Pittsburgh back, and forth every night of the week except Sunday.

That went someplace.

Captain Way also remembers the rivers before the locks and dams were finished.

Yeah, we had layup in the summertime.

River got too low to run.

I know one pal that used to tell of, he had to stop his boat one time.

Let a, a team of horses and a wagon get across ahead of him.

And without running over them.

The river was that low, even the ferry boats had quit when I used to run a ferry.

People could get on a horse and ride across.

In the 1930s, Captain Way wrote his first book, The Log of the Betsy Ann.

It was a national bestseller and told about his work taking passengers up and down the Ohio.

We charged $35 for the round trip, which required a week.

To Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and back.

35 bucks.

And that included your state room and your meal.

No wonder we went broke, man.

$35.

My golly, on the Delta Queen today, you couldnt cross the river here for $35.

They wouldn't take you on board such a cross river.

These days, Captain Way keeps busy writing and editing a magazine called the S and D Reflector.

S and D for Sons and Daughters of Pioneer River men.

That's Mark Twain's boss on the cover there.

And nobody had seen a picture of him.

He's the man that taught Mark Twain the river.

And somebody found his photograph here lately.

So.

All right, we made a front page out of it Captain Morrissey Bixby.

Well, Captain Way editor has his own collection of old photos, and he keeps getting more.

The one interesting part of the day is when the mail man comes.

Because you never know what's going to arrive for the S&D Reflector.

All kinds of manuscripts and pictures, and you name it.

Captain Way now stays on shore most of the time.

He's got the old antlers from the Betsy Ann, they symbolize speed, mounted on his garage.

And he's got the paddle wheel from a boat named Lady Grace, that he built and piloted up the Allegheny all the way to Olean, New York.

And, you know, he never did much fishing.

You'd think of all the years I spent on the river, I would have caught a fish.

And maybe I did, because I was in a canoe one time trying to go up the Little Canal River, and we upset the thing.

And when we got it righted there was a fish in it.

And if you call that catching a fish, Ive caught a fish.

The romantic days of the river packets are over, but they're great fun to hear about, elegant in their way.

And sometimes the food on board must have been great.

There was a secret to that business.

So when you load on a fresh load of passengers, say at Louisville.

You always gave them great big meal for supper.

We called it the stuffing meal.

And then in the morning, why, they'd all be so still so full of food that they slow down the second day.

And wouldnt lots of us?

Put that stuffing meal in them first.

Well, there's no regular packet service to Cincinnati anymore, but you can still get a hearty stuffing type meal, cruising Pittsburgh's rivers on one of the Gateway Clipper boats.

This fleet of tour boats sails on all of Pittsburgh's three rivers, showing off the beauty of the city, explaining the locks, giving people a taste of the joys of riverboat travel.

There are now six different clipper boats, from the grandiose majestic to the cozy Good Ship Lollipop.

Cruising down the river on a Sunday afternoon.

The various gateway clippers have been familiar sights on Pittsburgh's rivers since 1958.

John Connolly is a Pittsburgh businessman who likes to call himself a marketing man.

He's also involved in banking and now owns dinner cruise boats in several cities.

He was treasurer of the Allegheny County Sanitary authority ALCOSAN in 1955, when the idea of an excursion boat on the three rivers was first suggested.

I served for 25 years as treasurer of the Sanitary Authority, and we spent in excess of $150 million cleansing these rivers.

The Allegheny and the Monongahela and the Ohio were just let me say the cesspool of Pittsburgh and its environs.

And we were mandated, honest to goodness by the public and by Congress to clean up our rivers.

And being a marketing man, not a river man, but a marketing man, I, I had read in a lot of publications of the success of waterfront development, and I had read where the Census Bureau said that when you think of recreation, 90 some percent of the people think of getting in or on the water.

And so I said, oh my God, this, this great expanse of riverfront and water, there ought to be some use for it.

And that I have a nephew, my wife's brother's oldest son.

Captain Jack, as he's known, he's the head fleet captain of the Gateway Clipper Fleet.

He said to me, you know, Uncle John, I'm operating a passenger boat in Chicago.

Do you think a boat would go in Pittsburgh?

And the light came on, I my goodness, that's what the people would want to do.

They would want to get in and on the water on these beautiful rivers and let Pittsburghers see what these rivers have meant to Pittsburgh.

John Connolly's nephew, Captain Jack Gesling, was the first Gateway Clipper captain and still pilots various clipper boats on Pittsburgh's rivers.

He remembers his Uncle John's visit to Chicago in 1957, and how interested they both were in this new business idea.

So he said to me, if you can find a little passenger boat, we'll go and maybe buy it and bring it to Pittsburgh and start an excursion boat business in Pittsburgh.

And at the end of that year, in November of ‘57, I came back back here, found a little boat up in Erie.

We went there and bought it, brought it to Pittsburgh, and we started here with a 100 passenger boat in 1958.

May 17th was our first trip.

Never realizing that it would grow to be the business that it is today.

The Gateway Clipper Boats can be a great way to see the city and come rain or come shine, the captains can tell stories about the rivers, their history, and their lore.

Alexei, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome aboard the Liberty Bell for our Three Rivers cruise.

As the name reads, you will be traveling all three rivers.

We just left our Station Square dock riding upstream to the Monongahela River.

Captain Ken Moran is one of the youngest pilots on the Gateway Clippers.

He started with the company as a deckhand.

Now he's piloting boats.

These next three bridges well be passing under the sixth or seventh and the ninth Street.

Were all built from the same set of plans and have won many awards for their architectural design.

If you ride in the pilothouse, you sometimes hear inside information about the rivers.

See that towboat coming down on our left hand side?

There's the ALCOSAN its owned by the ALCOSAN wastewater treatment plant.

Interesting thing about that tugboat and barge is the captain on there, his name is Jim Kirk.

We call him James T Kirk of the Starship, ALCOSAN.

People who work on the rivers know about the Rivers Mysteries.

And Captain Jack Gesling has some theories about Pittsburgh's biggest river mystery.

That B-25 airplane that disappeared into the Mon in 1956.

It would not be too difficult to find.

We lost the stern wheel off of the original Gateway Clipper up in the Allegheny River.

We didn't know exactly where we lost it.

We got ahold of a diver.

That was a big story about the monster stealing the wheel off of the Clipper, but we found it in about two weeks.

Got it out of the river, put it back on the boat.

It's still on the boat.

That was pretty good sized stern wheel.

If we could find something like that, I'm sure you can find a B-25 or a plane of that size.

All this B-25 talk is about an aircraft that the United States Air Force says is still lying somewhere on the bottom of the Mon.

It came in over the Homestead High Level Bridge.

Bob Johns, a senior research technologist at Allegheny Ludlum, describes the scene.

4:09 in the afternoon, January 31st, 1956 B-25 bomber came out of the east skim low just over the top of this bridge, crashed in the river on there.

People on the bridge screeched their cars to a halt and ran and stood at this very railing and watched as the survivors came out of the cockpit and stood helplessly on top of me, on top of the floating wreckage, and they watched until it drifted out of sight, down underneath the BNO and Glenwood Bridge.

The plane drifted around the bend after crashing, drifted down along near the south bank of the river here and right out in this area sank with its nose pointing towards the.

The south shore here.

What happened after the plane sank is the mystery.

Two crewmen drowned and either 4 or 5 men survived, depending on whose story you want to believe.

Bob Johns is a kind of freelance investigator and has studied and researched the incident probably more than anyone else.

He's been on several TV reports, like this channel 11 documentary done in 1978 and on numerous radio talk shows.

He knows all the details, all the conflicting stories.

According to the Air Force, the plane is still there.

According to eyewitnesses who stood on the bank and watched it being removed from the river.

Obviously it's not still there.

The question is if it was taken out the night of the crash.

as some of these eyewitnesses state, the real question is why?

Why was it taken out so quickly, so secretly?

And why does the Air Force maintain to this day that it's still in that river?

Bob Johns has written a book that he calls The Windmill Blinked A look at the Strange Case of the Pittsburgh B-25.

It's an unpublished manuscript that contains detailed explanations of all his theories.

Captain Jack Gesling wasn't in Pittsburgh when the plane crashed, but he's heard a lot about it.

That plane was taken out the same night, and I did talk to different river people who claimed that they seen the trucks, people that worked along the river, that seen the plane being taken apart and pieces the wings loaded on a flatbed and hauled out of here.

And I personally believe it was taken out the same night.

because, for some reason, they didn't want anyone to know what it was doing in the river.

Some say there may have been nuclear weapons aboard devices for germ warfare or nerve gas.

The whole nerve gas scenario was brought out by a corps of engineers official, who was later threatened off on one of the TV shows.

We're trying to release that same information.

I don't know what it was.

I'm just as eager, as anyone else in Pittsburgh to find out what it was.

But something strange happened in Pittsburgh in 1956.

It's not over.

The B-25 isn't the only mystery around Pittsburgh's rivers.

A lot of people talk about a fourth river, an underground river that supplies the water for the fountain at the point.

Marshall Fossil is a geotechnical engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers.

He has a scientific explanation for this fabled underground waterway.

Well, I've heard of that before It's a river as long as I've been in Pittsburgh.

And I think when I hear people talk about it, most of the time they're envisioning a river in a cave, an actual flowing stream that you could maybe even swim in or put a boat on flowing through this cavern.

And that isn't the case really at all.

What we have here in Pittsburgh is, under the level of the rivers.

We have a very large body of sand and gravel that was left from the glacial times.

And the, the pores in this sand and gravel are full of water that have a virtually limitless supply of water to them from the river, here on the surface.

So what this cross-section chart cutting across an area near the point is showing is that under the rivers and under a thin surface layer of silts and clays, there's a geological layer of sand and gravels that can absorb and store water.

Water from this layer is taken out through wells and is pumped up in the fountain, but it's the pumps that propel it into the air, not natural pressure.

There's water underground near the point, but is that what you call a river?

Well, in a short answer, the word is no.

There is no fourth river.

There is only an extremely productive, aquifer is the geologic term for it.

A layer of, material that holds a great amount of water and from which the water can be withdrawn easily.

But there's no no flowing river under Pittsburgh.

Well, no river under.

But definitely three rivers around.

And you could say through Pittsburgh, because the city gets its drinking water from the rivers.

For the city itself, the water is pumped into the treatment plant near Aspinwall on the Allegheny River.

Doctor Stanley States, laboratory supervisor for the City of Pittsburgh's water treatment plant, explains what goes on once the Allegheny goes in.

River water has to be treated before it goes into a home, and the treatment is fairly conventional treatment.

But there are a lot of steps to it.

Essentially, there's three steps to treating river water.

There's a clarification step in which the silts and the clays from the river are removed.

There's a filtration step where the finer particles and even bacteria are removed from the water.

Then finally there's a disinfection step, which usually involves chlorine or chloramines to kill the bacteria viruses that may remain in the river water.

The river water goes through this long process of cleaning before it is pumped to Pittsburgh homes.

Different parts of the city get water from different rivers and different treatment plants.

Those people living in the city of Pittsburgh itself obtain their water from the Allegheny River via the City of Pittsburgh Water Treatment Plant, located on the north shore of the Allegheny near Aspinwall.

Those people living south of the city receive their water from West Penn Water Company.

From two intakes on the Monongahela River.

Those people living east of the city obtain their water from the Allegheny River by the Wilkinsburg Penn Joint Water Authority, who operates a treatment plant on the Allegheny River.

And those people living north of the city obtain their water for the most part from the Ohio River via West Penn or Westview Water Authority, located near Neville Island.

In addition to these four larger systems, there are a number of smaller systems throughout the county that obtain their water either from the rivers or from underground wells, so that in all there are about 25 water treatment plants within the county itself.

Of course, all this testing and clarifying of the river water and its temporary storage in reservoirs, like Highland Park, is to ensure clean and safe water for everyone, including local businesses.

We provide water for Iron City Brewery and used to provide water for a lot of the local breweries, and we've talked to the people at the breweries.

We have a good relationship with them and they find our water perfectly suitable to use.

They do their own treatment to make beer, but there's no particular advantage, as far as we know, of using river water or well water as compared to any other source.

This is perfectly suitable water to make good beer with.

And, you know, it takes a lot of water to make a bottle of beer.

Beer itself being about 95 to 98% water.

So it's Allegheny River water already cleaned and processed by the city, that goes in here at Pittsburgh Brewing.

Mike Coroda, the brewmaster here, says that they treat the water very carefully.

Water that we use here at the plant we get from the Highland Park Reservoir.

So our water is the same water that the residents use around here.

Any other business uses.

Well, the city has to add some type of, chlorination to the water to combat the organisms that you might get from the various areas.

And we have to get that chlorine out.

Okay.

That will affect the taste of the beer.

Whenever you're brewing the beer, that chlorine will react with something that's in the materials and give us an off flavor.

So before the Allegheny can become Iron City, it has to be cleaned some more.

Of course, it takes careful mixing and processing and aging to turn the water into beer, but Mike Coroda has no complaints about the abundant Allegheny.

Well, the river actually makes it easy access for us to get water where some people who might have to depend on a well or some type of a spring always has to worry about having water pressure at their plant.

Being pumped from the river, we are always assured of having this water pressure that we we really need.

If you get tired of pressure, you can turn to the river for escape and relaxation too.

In the 19th century, Pittsburghers used the rivers a lot for recreation.

Then terrible pollution scared everyone away for a long time.

Now game fish are swimming here again and Pittsburghers are taking to the rivers in record numbers, finding out how much fun these waters can be.

She sits on the dock.

A fish in the water uh huh.

I don't know her name.

She's a fisherman, daughter uh huh.

Come on down.

To my boat, baby, come on down where we can play.

Come on down to my boat, baby.

Come on down well sail away.

The Allegheny River Boat Club sits high on the east bank of the Allegheny in Verona at mile 10.9, in the Highland Park Pool.

This Marina and its pub are owned and operated by Alderman Marcel Bloxham, who came to Pittsburgh from California in 1960.

There wasn't much pleasure boating then.

So when we first saw it, it was open water and as I say, you couldn't even get down to the water.

There was no way to get down, climb over the cliff, 20ft down onto a ragged shoreline with the rocks and trees and brush.

We were just amazed that people didnt use the river.

In Pittsburgh, in 1960, nobody thought of coming down here.

And we had a terrible time getting permits.

But things have changed.

Just suddenly, people are enjoying the river.

At the Allegheny Boat Club, Alden seems to be in charge of the boaters in the Marina, while Marcel keeps an eye on the pub and restaurant.

The gossips, especially amongst the men up and down the river every everybody knows about everybody on this river.

Men are the gossips.

The men mostly, but its talking about things that are going on up and down the river anywhere that they're construction or any kind of an accident or any item of interest that somebody might want to report on would be brought to somebody's attention immediately.

It's a big gossip vine, and it goes up and down the river forever.

The Marina attracts many people.

Ed Crates is a land surveyor, when he's not on the river.

Now realize how nice it is.

I live right across the hill, five minutes from the river.

Next thing you know, you think you're on vacation.

Guy and Susie Myanzo met each other on the river, got married on an Oakmont dock, and love to go boating.

A lot of our life is is built around it.

I'm working as hard as I could work.

So I could buy a bigger boat so I can sit and live on a bigger boat.

Boat people, river people.

All kinds of Pittsburghers now gather every August for the Three Rivers Regatta.

It's the city's biggest summer celebration.

Complete with International Formula One racing, all kinds of water sports and plenty of good times.

Jean Connelly is the president and general manager of the regatta.

There no question about it.

It's just, one of the greatest things that's ever come to the, city of Pittsburgh because we have activities on the water, we have activities in the air and on the land that offer something for everybody.

One of the nicest things about the regatta is it's a free event.

It doesn't cost anybody anything to attend it.

Since 1978, the annual regatta festivities have made hundreds of thousands of Pittsburghers so much more aware of the excitement and enjoyment that can be had on the rivers Pittsburgher John Provich, who competes as a Formula One racer in the regattas biggest competition, grew up near the Ohio and sees big possibilities ahead for all the rivers.

The rivers are a natural resource that we should be looking more at.

The the idea that we have, such a big water system, we haven't thought of making enough recreational use out of it.

And I think the, the biggest dream that I ever would have of the river in its development is actually seeing resorts spring up along the river, much as some of the planners in Pittsburgh have already thought about.

I think that's the most exciting use of the river, that when we see resorts along the river, we'll know that Pittsburgh is coming full cycle from the steel monster that it was in the past to, the beautiful, clean city that it is today.

Actually, people are making plans for waterfront parks, resorts and concocting ideas for taking advantage of all the river's potential.

Developing the Three Rivers area has inspired many people.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned a fountain at the point, and a George Jetson type building where the park is.

A French architect once proposed a stadium and sports complex on a bridge across the Mon, complete with 100 air conditioned bowling alleys.

It's obvious Pittsburgh's rivers can be inspiring, and they're enticing more and more people to their shores.

In 1987, Mercy Hospital sponsored the first head of the Ohio rowing race, attracting rowers from across the country to this city.

That is Baltimore Crew Team, University of Baltimore.

Number 29, following on their heels is Duquesne University.

A century ago, rowing was one of Pittsburgh's biggest sports, and it's growing again.

Hope Feldman is an attorney who works for the real estate department of Giant Eagle.

She first got into rowing at Purdue University.

Now she changes her clothes every evening and heads for Herrs Island on the Allegheny.

I knew very little about the water before I got into rowing.

I mean, it was there, I crossed it.

I think the most I knew about it was I crossed it many, many times.

In Pittsburgh, rivers just aren't natural barriers.

Youre just crossing them.

At Purdue, Hope Feldman was a coxswain.

A coxswain is the person that sits in the back of the boat.

And they steer it.

And they steer it, and they also they are the coach on the water.

And as coaches will tell you, there's God, the coach, the coxswain.

And way far below that, the crew Hope comes here every afternoon because she founded and now coaches the area's first high school crew team, the rowers of North Allegheny High School, which obviously got its name from the river, too.

I didn't want to make it a sport where I would have to cut anyone.

Rowing is a sport that requires tremendous dedication because the more you practice, the better you become.

And it's not a sport that requires any talent because you can have all the talent in the world to play football and never learn how to row.

It's really a sport that just requires constant practice, constant dedication, constant working out, lifting weights, rowing, running, whatever it takes.

Many of the city's rowers have made Herrs Island their home base.

What makes it ideal for rowing purposes is it's got a back channel and the back channel is usually very flat and very stable and very easy to train people on.

And you never have to get out into the water for a day.

If the water is very rough on a windy day, the channel will still be easy to row it.

It's also the island is secluded from everything else, so you don't have to worry about crossing, you dont have to worry about a lot of other traffic, so it's good for setting up events where you can have people come down and you can hold an event without worrying about people getting lost in the middle of downtown, or people getting lost in another on the south side.

One chilly Saturday morning, Hope and her North Allegheny crew team hosted Pittsburgh's first high school crew race.

Teams came from Parkersburg, Marietta and Erie to compete on the Allegheny.

Is there any way we can change?

If we could change these two races, this would solve my problem.

Getting the boats ready takes a while.

The equipment is called rigging.

Just like on barges.

Girls, novice boats, get your oars down on the water now, please.

Thank you.

Come on, guys, real slippery.

Be careful.

The races make this sport of rowing all the more exciting.

But it's the daily dedication thats most impressive.

And as Hope Feldman knows people are drawn to these rivers.

The water here is beautiful.

It's cool enough.

You can dip in and swim in it, but you can really, I guess, be a part of it and use it.

There's really a whole new attitude about Pittsburgh's rivers.

No one considers them a cesspool anymore.

These rivers attracted people here.

These rivers have known days of glory and incredible industrial output.

Now they've got a chance to clean up and relax a bit and have some fun.

You say you love me.

Well, just to prove you do, I'll say you cry me a river.

Cry me a river.

I've cried everyone over you.