Fireworks over the Ohio River

For the 250th Fourth of July (and our 52nd believe it or not wedding anniversary), we drove to Jeffersonville, Indiana, an old port town on the Ohio River. This is the county seat of Clark County, and also functions as a suburb for Louisville, KY, which is just across the river.

(Interestingly and infuriatingly for us Hoosiers, the state line between KY and IN is mostly in the river, and has been moving north for two centuries, just because of the change in the river flow. Now most of the river is officially Kentucky, and there’s actually a piece of land in Indiana — fortunately just a big bog– which is legally Kentucky because the original river flowed over it.)

For the fireworks, we climbed onto the Big Four Bridge, a former railroad bridge which was built for the defunct “Big Four Railroad” (the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway). In an unprecedented display of interstate cooperation, Indiana and Kentucky turned the old bridge into a walking bridge.  Now up to 4000 people cross it every day, from downtown Jeffersonville to the Louisville Waterfront Park. The round trip is exactly 2 miles, and offers splendid views of each town, the two nearby vehicle bridges, and the long lazy river. It’s a great place to watch the river traffic, the narrow barges, tugboats, and of course the Belle of Louisville steamboat.

And it’s one of the best places in the country to experience a fireworks display! We stood with thousands of other happy people to see the fireworks erupt from just downriver in downtown Louisville. This is on the western edge of the Eastern Timezone, so it was 10pm before it was dark enough. Even so, many children were pressed against the railings and oohing and ahhing with ech explosion. In fact, we were all children again that night over the river!