Canoeing Guide to Western Pennsylvania and Northern West Virginia

Roy Weil and Mary Shaw, editors


The Canoeing Guide to Western Pennsylvania and Northern West Virginia is a guidebook to the canoeable waters that run westward out of Pennsylvania via the Ohio River. It includes some streams from neighboring areas, as well. The guide is the result of volunteer effort over the past 30 years by many, many canoeists, working through the Pittsburhg Council of American Youth Hostels. It is currently in its eighth edition, covering about 3000 miles of rivers in 470 pages.

The primary purpose of these Web pages is to make the summary data, especially river classifications, gauges, and preferred water levels, available to the canoeing community. This is a big table, available as

You will, of course, want to know how to interpret the columns.

A word of caution: We and many others compiled the Guide as an aid to pleasure canoeists. We have tried to present accurate descriptions of these rivers and creeks. However, we are human, and rivers change with time. The suggestions in the guide, and any conclusions you may draw from these pages, may be invalidated by water and weather conditions, by the skill of your paddling party, and by changes in the rivers themselves. Therefore we can no take responsibility for errors, omissions, changes in the rivers, or for other problems encountered through use of this guide. Each padler who sets forth on a river assumes personal responsibility, not only for his or her own safety, but also for the safey of others on the trip. Ultimately, your safety depends mostly on your own common sense and good judgement.

The material on this page may be circulated freely, with credit, for noncommercial puproses and river safety. For your own copy of the book, send $16.50 (includes tax, postage, handling) to Shaw-Weil Associates, 414 South Craig St #307, Pittsburgh PA 15213 or order from Pittsburgh Council, American Youth Hostels.


Other outdoor publications by the authors
Updated 8/18/95 by Mary Shaw
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