

NOTE: I would like to thank T. Andrew Nash, Mapping Group Supervisor for the Ohio Geological Survey,
for reviewing the text of this article for technical accuracy. AI images from ChatGPT.
One of the most striking features in Ohio that can be seen on Google Earth (see below) is a massive “riverless” valley in the lower portion of the state. This “ghost river” is located east of Portsmouth near the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio rivers. It spans about 35 miles to the north and looks like a giant question mark carved into the rolling Appalachian foothills. From above, a patchwork of farms within the valley sticks out like a sore thumb in the mostly forested region.
About 30 miles to the southeast of this location, just across the Ohio River in Huntington, West Virginia, is a similar “riverless” valley (see below, above right) that, today, acts as a smooth flat surface for more than 35 miles of Interstate 64 as it passes through the otherwise rugged Appalachian foothills.
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These two abandoned valleys are in fact related and part of an ancient river system known as the Teays River, which itself is part of one of the oldest river systems in the world—one that dates back more than 300 million years, before the formation of the Appalachian Mountains!
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Although later diverted or buried by glaciers, the Teays River passed through western Ohio during a time when the world was changing hands from the dinosaurs to the mammals. The exact age, however, is not known for certain. The river has been a topic of discussion, debate and intrigue for decades and is part of local folklore.
Even though it is long gone, traces of the river can still be detected in the landscape, including several ghost valleys, rock formations and modern rivers. The rest of the picture is fun to imagine and fill in, including when visiting some of these locations in person. But, before you go, here’s a little background…



Click HERE to view this area on Google Maps.
Before the Ohio River
Before the last Ice Age some 2.5 million years ago, the Teays River acted as the drainage system for much of the east-central United States and Ohio, just as the Ohio River does today. Its headwaters were in Blowing Rock, North Carolina where it flowed down the mountain to the north, passed through Virginia and West Virginia, and then entered Ohio in Huntington. It then flowed northwest to Chillicothe where traces of the river disappear beneath the till plains of western Ohio. From what we know (based on wells and geophysics), it then traveled to the west, passing south of Columbus, north of Springfield, through Champaign and Shelby counties and then exited the state north of Grand Lake St. Marys near Rockford. From here, the river crossed Indiana and Illinois and then connected to the modern-day Mississippi River, which was more like the Gulf of Mexico at this time. (See map above)
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The Teays was a massive river with countless tributaries, including what would one day become the Great Miami River and Stillwater River valleys, which flowed in a northerly direction at this time!
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Much of the path of the Teays can be followed today by tracing the modern course of the New River in North Carolina to the Kanawha River in West Virginia, which flows into the modern Ohio River. In fact, a more accepted name for the “Teays River” is the “Ancestral Kanawha Valley,” which was (and continues to be) fed by the New River.


At left, an AI depiction of what the Teays River might have looked like in Ohio millions of years ago. Above, a view of the modern New River in West Virginia, which is related to the Teays.
New is Old
Most readers will know about the New River because of its popularity as a whitewater rafting destination in West Virginia—not to mention its stunning beauty. But, as any rafting guide will tell you, the New River is far from new. In fact, it is likely one of the oldest rivers in the world. We know it is older than the Appalachian Mountains because, unlike almost all rivers in the mountain chain, the New River cuts directly through the mountain ridges, rather than flowing around them. In other words, at one time, the eastern U.S. (where the Appalachian Mountains are today) was flat and located next to the ocean. The New River was just another low-lying coastal river in this ancient terrain. Then, due to continental collisions and volcanic activity in the Atlantic Ocean, this flat land (including Ohio) was uplifted, creating the Appalachian Mountains and the Great Plains beyond them. When this happened (over tens of millions of years), the New River simply lifted up with the land and cut directly through the mountains as they grew. It then started flowing and carving its way to the next lowest point possible, which happened to be the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico to the west, which, based on the topography at the time, led it straight across the Buckeye State and through the Miami Valley.
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The river and its tributaries supported an unbelievable amount of flora and fauna for eons and carved out beautiful valleys, most of which are now buried in western Ohio.
Scientists recently learned that one of the deepest parts of the Teays River Valley in Ohio was beneath modern-day Anna in Shelby County. A 2018 study by two geologists from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Daniel R. Blake and Andrew Nash, found that there is a deep buried valley located more than 650 feet beneath Anna and two miles wide in the area. Their study led to the conclusion that it was because of Anna’s location on top of the loose till in the valley that the town experienced widespread damage during an earthquake in 1937, while Sidney and other nearby communities (located closer to sturdy bedrock) were minimally impacted. (LEARN MORE)
The next time you drive past Anna on Interstate 75, remember that there is a massive valley beneath you that, if it weren’t for glacial till filling it in, would require an equally massive bridge to cross over!

A new bedrock topography map shows Anna’s location on top of the deepest part of the ancient Teays River Valley, meaning that the town sits on top of more than 650 feet of dirt and rocks. By contrast, Botkins, Kettlersville and Knew Knoxville sit on the sides of the old valley, where there’s less glacial till between the towns and the bedrock below. (Images courtesy of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources)

New data indicates that the buried valley below Anna is more gorge-like than first interpreted, and as seen below. Learn more about how this impacted Anna during the 1937 earthquakes HERE.
Below this image is an AI depiction of what a mile-high glacier might have looked like in Ohio. Such glaciers spelled the end of the Teays River...


Lake Tight and the End of the Teays
Some time after 2.5 million years ago, the Earth entered the most recent Ice Age (the Pleistocene). From that point, until just about 14,000 years ago, a series of ice sheets (some a mile thick) moved down from Canada and covered a large portion of Ohio (see AI depiction above), including all of western Ohio. When this happened, the glaciers not only bulldozed the course of the Teays River, and buried its valleys with till, but also dammed up the water that continued to flow into Ohio from Blowing Rock—and everywhere in between! The result was what scientists named Lake Tight, which was located in the southeast corner of Ohio (see map at top of page) and may have been larger than modern-day Lake Erie! It rose to a depth of 900 feet and covered a massive area that included parts of West Virginia and Kentucky. Cities such as Athens, Charleston, Jackson and even Chillicothe were completely under water!
According to Nash, Lake Tight formed more than 780,000 years ago and experienced at least three glaciations in Ohio. When the first ice sheet interrupted the Teays River, it started the process that led to the formation of the Ohio River.
When the Ice Age ended and the last ice dams melted, Lake Tight was unleashed on the new landscape one last time. The result of this long process was the creation of the modern course of the Ohio River, which now flowed to the south and west, at the bottom reaches of the ice sheets.
Likewise, while the Great Miami and Stillwater rivers (prior to the Ice Age) had flowed north into the Teays, they now reversed course and flowed south to the new master river—the Ohio River. In this sense, although mostly sculpted by the Ice Age, the size and depth of the Miami and Stillwater valleys today appears to go back much further in time, owing their existence to the Teays.
There’s not much information about where the Great Miami or (more so) Stillwater rivers entered the Teays River (or one of its tributaries), but some geologists think the “Great Miami” entered near Springfield, while others think it joined in Shelby County. Regardless, before the Ice Age, the Teays River was the center of attention in western Ohio. All rivers flowed into it and valleys were formed around it.




Top left, clockwise through the imagination of AI, the first glaciers to reach the Teays blocked the course of the river, creating Lake Tight (depicted here from far above by AI). When the glaciers melted, debris and till slowly filled in the old Teays River Valley. Over millions of years, it simply disappeared below the till.
A Ride Through the Ghost Valley
In hindsight, it is quite amazing to drive past the towns of Wheelersburg and Sciotodale on U.S. Rt. 52 and see the mountains along the Ohio River briefly disappear and then reappear just as quickly. This gap is actually just the empty Teays River valley mentioned at the beginning of this article, now located above the Ohio River by a few feet and away from the flow of any major stream.
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With the right eyes, it’s an interesting place to visit.
The ghost valley can be accessed through the town of Sciotodale on Ohio Route 335, which first passes through (for Ohio) unusually tall canyons before entering the actual valley. These “canyons” (pictured below, top right) might be one of the few chances to visually imagine what the area looked like millions of years ago, when the Teays flowed (and as seen in the AI image at the top of this article). No doubt, these same sandstone and shale walls on Route 335 were carved by and eventually looked down upon the Teays River below. Although the river is gone, the rocks remain.
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From here, Route 335 follows a set of railroad tracks into the countryside. As the drive unfolds, travelers will notice that they are indeed within a valley. The area is so flat that, just before reaching the town of Minford, drivers pass the Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport. After this, to continue through the heart of the valley, travelers will turn right on Ohio Route 776, followed later by a left on Glade Road and finally a left on Ohio Route 32, which leads to Piketon and the end of the ghost river and its valley.
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This entire route is located within the abandoned valley and contains several picturesque towns and a few minor attractions.
One of the only streams running through the valley is called the Little Scioto River (technically an “underfit stream”), which is not much more than a small, muddy creek in most areas. However, east of the town of Stockdale, the stream is wide enough to have a covered bridge built over it—the Johnson Road Covered Bridge. Here, drivers can experience the true ruralness of the abandoned river valley as the road leading into the covered bridge is paved and the one leading out is gravel. The echoes of cows mooing and farmers working nearby add to the peaceful ambiance.
Once travelers reach Piketon, they can follow the Scioto River into Chillicothe, where the Appalachian foothills give way to the flat till plains and farmland of western Ohio and where the mysteries of the Teays River are still unfolding to this day.






Observations and Questions
It would be fun to peel back the glacial till from western Ohio, like carpet, and take a look at the hidden landscape beneath—the buried valleys, the river beds, the caves and caverns, gorges and rock walls, possibly even some undiscovered fossils. Or to stand at the bottom of the 650-foot-deep valley beneath Anna and look up at all of the layers of time that were carved into the valley walls, some of them dating back half a billion years!
It would also be interesting to watch the glaciers bulldoze this same landscape and then fill in the same 650-foot-deep valley with more dirt than I can comprehend. (Thank you, Canada!)
There are many unanswered questions about the Teays River in Ohio. How far back does it go? Are there any dinosaur bones down there? What was the outline of the entire drainage system, and how far and wide did it span? Did the Teays, in fact, actually continue north from Chillicothe into what would one day become Lake Erie, but at that time was a river that we call the Erigan River?
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In our own backyard in the Miami Valley, there seem to be a number of natural features that appear to owe their existence more so to the ancient Teays River and its tributaries, rather than only the recent Ice Age. For instance, Honey Creek (in southeast Miami County) appears to flow through a valley that is much larger than the size of the stream that is there now, which is quite small. Many drivers must ask themselves why this part of State Route 201, specifically near New Carlisle Rd., is so abruptly hilly. Is it because it passes through an abandoned valley that dates back to the Teays, or is just the result of glacial moraines?
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Likewise, some of the limestone and shale outcrops that sit at the base of the Great Miami and Stillwater rivers, and that are visible throughout rivers and streams in the Miami Valley, show indications that they were eroded by water that was flowing in the opposite direction as today, meaning they pre-date the Ice Age. How long did they exist?
Whether getting on a computer and pulling up Google Earth to try to trace its course, visiting a park along the Great Miami or Stillwater rivers, or getting in your car and driving through an abandoned valley that dates back to the age of the dinosaurs, exploring the ancient Teays River and its many mysteries is an adventure on the road and of the mind.