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Mississinewa River

The Mississinewa River is one of Indiana's great waterways—a 120-mile tributary of the Wabash that rises in northwestern Ohio and winds west and north through Grant, Wabash and Miami counties before joining the Wabash just east of Peru. Its name comes from the Miami word nimacihsinwi, roughly "water on a slope," and the rushing, falling character it describes is still the river's signature: dropping about 3.3 feet to the mile, it ranks among the swiftest streams in the state. Near the pin, the river backs up behind a flood-control dam into the 3,200-acre Mississinewa Lake, a sprawling Army Corps and state-managed recreation ground ringed by forests, prairies and farmland. The lake is the practical heart of a visit, offering a swimming beach, boat ramps and a marina, fishing (including ice fishing), waterskiing, hunting, a large campground with cabins, and a network of self-guided hiking loops named for the Miamis and the women of the river's history. Layered over all of this is a genuinely rich past. The Mississinewa was the heartland of the Miami people, home of the trader-chief Francis Godfroy and of Frances Slocum, the captured Pennsylvania girl who chose to remain with her adopted nation; it was also the scene of the December 1812 Battle of the Mississinewa in the War of 1812, an early action ordered by William Henry Harrison.