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The Patoka River and Robb Creek

A Little More on the Patoka River Emptying into White River through Robb Creek

If you are into computers and web sites you can look at the U.S. Geological Survey at terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx and find Hazleton, Patoka or whatever address you would like to see a topographical map or an aerial photograph of any area. The Hazleton site will give you a good look at the Militia Donation Survey. If you follow Robb Creek to the south you will see the area where Robb Creek and the Trippet Ditch nearly meet. These streams have been dredged many times, so it is possible that the Patoka River emptied into the White River several thousand years ago.

I’m sure if you are a map enthusiast, as I am, you will enjoy moving around Gibson County and looking at the aerial and topographical maps of our area.

While looking at this site with Uncle Chester, he expounded on the theory that the Patoka River once emptied into the White River through Long Pond. This is the other story I have not written about. If you look at both the aerial and topographical maps of Long Pond and Patoka River area west of Patoka, it is possible to make a connection that centuries ago the Patoka River did connect with Long Pond to form the mouth of the Patoka River.

We do know that the third mouth of the Patoka River was into Wabash River near the Gibson Generating Station. The Patoka River was dredged straight out into the Wabash River by the railroad to avoid building a bridge over the Patoka River. This really hurt the Patoka as far as drainage, because a river empting into another rivers current at an angle has much more current than if it empties straight into the other river.

It is possible that over several thousand years The Patoka River had at least four mouths, two into The White River and definitely two into the Wabash River.

I hope you check out the terraserver web site, you can use it to find anyone’s home on the map if you know their name, address and zip code.