Talk:Monongahela River

Untitled
I've been thinking of making a map of the 10 or so main tributaries of the Monongahela River, but I can't figure out how best to do it. It seems like it would be best to make a single basemap showing all the main tributaries. Perhaps it would be enough to make a single map showing the 10 main rivers, labeled, and reuse that for each river page? Alternatively, I could highlight specific tributaries for specific pages -- but existing wikipedia maps that do that don't look very good to me (like the Missouri River tributary maps, such as Powder River (Montana)). So I wondering if anyone can point me to nicely done example maps that show a system of tributaries.

The main tributaries I am thinking of are: Monongahela River, Youghiogheny River, Cheat River, Shavers Fork, Black Fork, Blackwater River, Dry Fork, Tygart Valley River, West Fork, Buckhannon River, and Middle Fork. Sound right? Pfly 20:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend taking a look at the maps that Kmusser has created, they can be found at User:Kmusser/Images. I'd also recommend talking to Kmusser and taking a look at WikiProject Maps. VerruckteDan 20:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * If the Cheat River's upper tributaries are included, the Glady Fork and Laurel Fork should probably be included even though they don't have articles yet. (I've had those two on my to-do list for ages now; they're approximately equal in size and prominence to the Dry Fork.)  The Cheat River's network of headwaters tributaries is fairly intricate, I wonder if naming them all might overwhelm a map of the Monongahela basin?  (The Black Fork, for instance, is only 4 miles long.) --Malepheasant 03:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Re-reading this now, maybe you weren't intending to name them directly on the map anyway? --Malepheasant 03:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well I don't know. There's the possibility of a number or letter key, or highlighting streams for each page. It is an intricate basin, which is partly why I wanted to make a map -- a while ago I spent some time figuring out which stream connects to which, and it was not easy to do, even with some pretty good maps. That Black Fork stream easily confuses. ..I started a rough test map tonight and it seems pretty challenging to do it well. I can't guarantee I'll manage to do it, but it is something I've thought about for some time. There's a variety of ways it could be done, the question is figuring out which is best for a relatively small web-map. Thanks for the comments! Pfly 06:56, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Since my name was invoked - that sounds very similar to the series I did for the Volga and its tributaries (e.g. Kama River). Feel free to copy that style, or I'll get to making them myself eventually.  Kmusser 13:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Kmusser, I did borrow your Volga/Kama style, but ended up veering off into a somewhat different direction. I've made a few maps of the Monongahela river system, trying things out. I posted some maps and request for comments over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps, specifically Comments on some maps requested. Malepheasant, I kept Glady and Laurel Fork in there at first, but they are so close together and close to Dry Fork that that part of the map was looking confusing and cluttered, so I took them out. They can be added again, or some variation done for them. My original logic in leaving them out was that I'd show streams whose confluences change the names of other streams. Thus Dry Fork was in because its confluence with Blackwater River made Black Fork, but Laurel and Glady were out. Then again, by that logic I should leave out Middle Fork, Buckhannon.. and even Cheat. So much for logic.

Anyway, I'm curious about the test maps posted over at WikiProjects Maps. Thoughts? (I'm not entirely sure why I am mapping this basin, I've never been there. I think it has to do with the odd nature of the topology and stream names -- a bit of a challenge I guess) Posted the Monongahela River map test here too. Pfly 21:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the following from this article:

The Monongahela is one of the few rivers on Earth that flow northward for much of their length. While the Nile is in a class of its own, the Monongahela flows almost due north for 128 miles.

The reason for the removal is two-fold. First, it is not particularily rare for rivers to run northward (please see the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River#Direction_of_flow). Second, the name Monongahela represents only a small portion of a river system that flows predominately southward.

fiat lux 17:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Again removed the remark that the river is unusual for running north. Many rivers run north, most notable the Nile and the Rhine. It certainly is not uncommon. Rysz (talk) 20:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation help
I am in contact with a professional voice actor who is trying to record a spoken version of George Washington and he wants to hear someone pronounce "Monongahela". If anyone would be willing to call him up or even leave a voice mail with the proper pronunciation, please email me and I will send you his contact info. Thanks.  howcheng  {chat} 18:03, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I know this isn't formal phonetics, but the pronunciation is basically "moe-non-guh-hay-la". Another common pronunciation is "moe-nun-guh-hee-la".  Either one is basically correct.  Brian Powell (talk) 02:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Using Brian Powell's approach to phonetics, I can tell you that most of the people who actually live in the Monongahela valley pronounce it "muh-nahng-guh-heel-uh." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.216.37.67 (talk) 05:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

From my experience as a former Monongahela resident for nearly 20 years, we pronounced it "muh-nahng-guh-HELL-a." Nothing derogatory is meant by the phonetic "HELL"...it's just the way it was pronounced when I was growing up. Jack Anders, Aug. 26, 2008.

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"Monongy"
I have repeatedly removed the section about "Monongy, the man-fish" because it makes WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims without anything resembling reliable sources. As far as I can tell, the section was first added in 2010 and a string of anon IPs have reverted every attempt to remove it from the article since then. It has since acquired a couple of "references"—one to a jokey local column from 2015, which is clearly based on the Wikipedia article instead of vice versa, and one to an article about a swimming race that doesn't support anything printed here. In fact, it looks like the whole Monongy "legend" was just marketing for the race in the first place. Many claims in the section are clearly preposterous; e.g. "Sightings occurred on a weekly basis and the police department created a task force whose sole purpose was to investigate sightings of the creature." Strange that nothing like this was ever mentioned in the local papers... except not really, because it didn't happen. I am not in any doubt about whether this material belongs in Wikipedia, I am just posting here to document my reasoning. Camerafiend (talk) 13:21, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your work, Camerafiend. While I think this vandalism has already drawn more attention than it deserves, just for the record I concur with your analysis. This definitely is not appropriate and should be removed. For those who are unsure, WP:Do not create hoaxes is a good place to look. This is not an article about some established hoax, it is a case where Wikipedia was used to perpetrate a hoax.MDK33 (talk) 08:31, 13 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I have protected the page for a year (after almost a year of a slow edit war). To anyone who wants to include this: first get consensus here (though the above two comments are already a !vote on the exclude side).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:45, 13 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I concur on the exclusion. -LilHelpa (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I also concur on the exclusion. Show me a scholarly source. Sbalfour (talk) 00:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Disruptive editing has returned (from the same IP). As of this date, we have 4 votes to exclude and 0 votes to include. While having to protect the page is unfortunate, I believe the article progressed well during the last year when the editors were allowed to focus on improving it and not just on cleaning up.MDK33 (talk) 21:13, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Interpretation Monongahela/Buckongahelas
The article Buckongahelas says that in the Lenape language the word means a "Giver of Presents." Curious, I read Monongahela River where I learned that word means "falling banks" in Umami and something similar in Lenape. I know little of indigenous languages, and I am well aware that straight translation rarely works. Still, such a big difference seems odd for two words which have the same suffix. I presume the river article has more oversight so it is the more likely to be correct. Could an expert please resolve this? Humphrey Tribble (talk) 21:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)