Monday Creek is a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

of the

Hocking River The Hocking River (formerly the Hockhocking River) is a right tributary of the Ohio River in southeastern Ohio in the United States. The Hocking flows mostly on the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau, but its headwaters are in a glaciated region. ...

, 27 miles (43.5 km) long, in southeastern

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Via the Hocking and

Rivers, it is part of the watershed of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

, draining an area of 116 square miles (300 km²) on the unglaciated portion of the

Allegheny Plateau The Allegheny Plateau , in the United States, is a large dissected plateau area of the Appalachian Mountains in western and central New York (state), New York, northern and western Pennsylvania, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Oh ...

. Monday Creek has been badly affected by

acid mine drainage Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines or coal mines. Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weathering ...

Course and watershed

Monday Creek rises north of

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

in southern Perry County, and flows generally southwardly through northeastern Hocking County and northwestern Athens County, passing through the eastern part of Nelsonville to its confluence with the Hocking River about 2 miles (3 km) southeast of that city. Its largest tributaries are Little Monday Creek, 14.3 miles (23 km) long, which flows through Perry and Hocking Counties, and the Snow Fork, 10.7 miles (17.2 km) long, which rises in Perry County and flows through Hocking and Athens Counties, through the communities of Murray City and Buchtel. As of 1994, land use in the Monday Creek watershed was occupied this way: *Forest, 87% * Surface mining, 5% *Cropland, 3% *

Wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The p ...

s, 2% *Grazing and pasture, 1% each *Urban, 1% The

Wayne National Forest The Wayne National Forest is located in the south-eastern part of the US state of Ohio, in the Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau. It is the only national forest in Ohio. Forest headquarters are located between The Plains and Nelsonville, Ohio, on ...

owns 38% of land in the watershed; the largest private landowner is the Sunday Creek Mining Company.

History

The

Adena Adena may refer to: Artists * ADENA, Romanian singer-songwriter *Adeena Karasick (born 1965), Canadian poet, performance artist, and essayist * Adena Halpern (born 1968), American author *Adena Jacobs (born 1982), Australian theatre director Place ...

, who lived in the region around 1000 BC, were the earliest known inhabitants of the Monday Creek area. Later

native Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and entert ...

people of the region included the Lenape,

and

Wyandot Wyandot may refer to: Native American ethnography * Wyandot people, also known as the Huron * Wyandot language Wyandot (sometimes spelled Wandat) is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known variously as Wyandot or Wya ...

. According to legend, early European explorers of the region named the stream for the day on which it was discovered. The previous day the explorers had similarly named nearby Sunday Creek. The earliest white settlements in the area date to 1774; the

Ohio Company The Ohio Company, formally known as the Ohio Company of Virginia, was a land speculation company organized for the settlement by Virginians of the Ohio Country (approximately the present U.S. state of Ohio) and to trade with the Native Ameri ...

purchased all the land in the watershed in two installments in 1787 and 1792. The aggressive pursuit of natural resources, including coal, timber, salt, iron, and clay took its toll on the watershed from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century.

Iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

production in the area aided the North during the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. As much as 89% of the Monday Creek watershed was deforested by 1885, with replanting beginning with the establishment of the Wayne National Forest in 1935. Salt mining occurred in the watershed in the 19th century; clay brick production peaked in the early 20th century;

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

and

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

production began in 1909. The earliest

coal mines Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron fro ...

in the watershed can be traced to the 1860s. Early mines were

underground Underground most commonly refers to: * Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth Underground may also refer to: Places * The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston * The Underground ...

, a practice which was in sharp decline by the 1920s and had ended completely in the watershed by 1991. Surface mining was begun post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and declined in the 1970s. Coal in the watershed is primarily of the Middle Kittaning #6 variety, which is high in sulfur and has been identified by the Ohio EPA as having a high potential for pollution. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has identified Monday Creek as having been "irretrievably altered to the extent that no appreciable aquatic life can be supported" due to severe contamination by

. The Monday Creek Restoration Project, sponsored by Rural Action, has been working since 1994 to address water quality issues in the Monday Creek watershed.

References

External links

Real-time water flow data for Monday Creek from the United States Geological Survey
{{authority control Rivers of Athens County, Ohio Rivers of Hocking County, Ohio Rivers of Perry County, Ohio Rivers of Ohio

Course and watershed

History

See also

References

External links