The SPATIAL LOCATION of rivers is based so far as possible upon contemporaneous county and state boundaries that used the waterways as their boundary, otherwise is the approximate center point of waterways or the channel per U.S.G.S topographical maps.

The EXISTENCE of steamboat operations on the river stretches in question is based upon reports to Congress by the Army Corp of Engineers, contemporary accounts, and histories such as Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1949) and Hiram Martin Chittenden, History of early steamboat navigation on the Missouri river; life and adventures of Joseph La Barge. New York: F. P. Harper (1903). Existence required more evidence than a single steamboat voyage.

Navigable has a specific legal meaning and implications attaching thereto. This is discussed at length in the documentation.

File contains source references regarding steamboat operations and head of navigation together with a date when each stretch of river opened and closed (2100 = still in operation by tugs etc.)

In general, rivers that were improved and called "navigations" are treated as rivers rather than canals.

Rivers are generally terminated at the coastline. However, many rivers also had legthy estuaries beyond the coastline that were also used by steamboats (in fact under English common law all waters subject to the ebb and flow of tides are treated as navigable). In particular, the Delaware River beyond the coastline boundary was the only part of that river on which steamboats operated. Therefore tidal extensions to various rivers were added. These are identified by "Tidal"=1 in the associated database file.

Map thumbnail includes these tidal reaches.

Digitized maps were geo-referenced using ArcGIS 10’s spline algorithm against the National Historical Geographic Information System’s 2009 TIGER-based historical state and county boundary files (see www.nhgis.org) and the U.S. National Atlas’s database of cities and town.

See Jeremy Atack "Procedures and Issues Relating to the Creation of Historical Transportation Shapefiles of Navigable Rivers, Canals, and Railroads in the United States" available at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/jeremyatack/files/2015/09/HistoricalTransportationSHPfilesDocumenation.pdf (NOTE: updated versions of this documentation file may be available). Also see Jeremy Atack, "On the Use of Geographic Information Systems in Economic History" Journal of Economic History, 73:2 (June 2013): 313-338. Also available at https://my.vanderbilt.edu/jeremyatack/files/2011/08/EHAPresidentialAddress.pdf

UPDATE HISTORY:

This mapping was updated February 16, 2015 to correct its projection to that used for my other transportation SHP files (=USA_Contiguous_Albers_Equal_Area_Conic with geographic coordinate system GCS_North_American_1983)