Other major cargoes include agricultural products, chemicals, crushed rock, gravel, petroleum products, sand, and steel products. Forests of beech, hickory, oak, poplar, and sycamore trees cover the Ohio River Valley. Animals in these forests include chipmunks, muskrats, raccoons, red foxes, squirrels, white-tailed deer, and woodchucks. Among the fishes in the Ohio are bullheads, bass, catfish, and trout. Community and industrial wastes and farming chemicals pollute the Ohio.
Pollution threatens fish and other wildlife.
The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission regulates the release of river pollutants. In 1669, the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, became the first European to see the Ohio River. At that time, Shawnee and other Indians lived along its shores. Throughout the 1700's, traders used the river to explore the entire Ohio River Valley. Settlers traveled on the Ohio to the Northwest Territory after that region was established in 1787.