John James Audubon lived and worked for a number of years near the Falls of the Ohio. The falls are formed out of a slight rise in the limestone bed of the Ohio River near present-day Louisville, Kentucky. The rise dates back 410 million years ago to the Devonian Age. The falls used to stretch approximately 2 ½ miles. They began to the east where Beargrass Creek flows into the Ohio River. Beargrass likely comes not from a type of grass but from the English anglicizing what the French were calling “barre grasse” or bare rocks. The bare rocks that made up the Falls of the Ohio were almost impossible to navigate.
There were three main chutes that ran through the Falls of the Ohio. The furthest chute upstream was the Indian or what was also called the Indiana. Then came the Middle followed by the Kentucky. Some of the boulders, whirlpools, eddies, sandbars, and other hazards that were located in the chutes had names like Backbone Reef and Wave Rock. The total drop of the Falls of the Ohio was 26 feet, with the highest drop of eight feet occurring in the Kentucky Chute. Four of the rocky islets within the Falls of the Ohio were named. Above the Kentucky Chute going from upstream to downstream was Corn (originally Dunmore’s), Goose, and Rock. Below the Kentucky Chute and at the end of the Falls of the Ohio was Sand Island. During dry periods, great herds of animals, especially buffalo, depended on the Falls of the Ohio as a crossing point to reach the grasslands and salt licks in the barrens of Kentucky (see Plate 14).
In 1829, dams, channels, and dikes began to be put in place to bypass the Falls of the Ohio. The Falls of the Ohio today amount to an Indiana state park on the opposite side of the Ohio River from the city of Louisville, Kentucky, that overlooks a bit of water rippling through a field of rocks.
When John James Audubon explored the Falls of the Ohio, the plant that would have been mainly seen growing near the falls and many other places along the banks of the Ohio River would have been American Cane (Vulgo Cane) or what is commonly referred today as River cane (Arundinaria gigantea). River cane spreads by sending up shoots from rhizomes to form canebreaks. Given the chance, canebrakes can stretch for miles. The main force that controlled the spread of canebreaks were buffalo. Wherever the herds of buffalo roamed, the buffalo worked as mowing crews chomping on and trampling down the River cane. Many birds and other types of wildlife thrived in the canebrakes like the Solitary Flycatcher which Audubon placed with River cane in Birds of America. The current common name for the Solitary Flycatcher is the Blue-headed vireo.