“The river we left is called Riviere au Portrait, because at the mouth where it flows into the Belle Riviere, there are many signs and figures of men and animals chiseled on the rocks" - Chaussegros de Lery wrote on April 3, 1755
The Ohio River Valley is covered with pre-European contact petroglyphs made by Native tribes including the ones in East Liverpool, Ohio. Due to modern locks and dams, the river levels rarely fall low enough to expose the site. Thankfully in 1908 local resident Harold Barth spent an entire year transferring all of the petroglyphs onto paper which are now part of the collection at the Museum of Ceramics in East Liverpool. Scholars think they were carved sometime between 1200 and 1750 but exactly when will ultimately remain a mystery.
