Gallipolis

Stopped at Gallipolis, pronounced locally as galley-polis. The key bit of history of this town is not mentioned on the plaques ashore.  From Wiki:

Gallipolis was first settled by Europeans in 1790: "The French 500" were a group of French aristocrats, merchants, and artisans who were fleeing the violence and disruption of the French Revolution.[12][13] They were led by Count Jean-Joseph de Barth, an Alsatian member of the French National Assembly.[14] It is the second city to be founded in the newly organized Northwest Territory of the United States. It is known as "The Old French City" because of this beginning.

The Gallipolis Epileptic Hospital Stone Water Towers, built in 1892, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

This was a time of rampant land speculation in the Northwest Territory, recently opened for settlement after it was organized following the Northwest Indian Wars. The French had worked with the Scioto Company, a purported land development company registered in Paris in 1789, paying its agents for land along the Ohio River. They sailed to the United States on several ships, most to Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington, DC. From there they traveled over land and by the Ohio River to reach Gallipolis. The French were city people and were taken aback by the undeveloped frontier they encountered.[16]

When they arrived at the Gallipolis area, they learned their deeds of land were worthless. The Scioto Company did not own the land, for which the Ohio Company had an option for development. They survived somehow, building cabins close together in what is now City Park, with a defensive palisade and bastions. In 1795 President George Washington's administration granted the settlers free land in the French Grant in southwest present-day Scioto County, Ohio. Under the terms of this grant, settlers had to live on the land for 5 years and show cultivation in order to become owners. Settlers who chose to stay in Gallipolis had to pay again for their plots, this time to the Ohio Company.[16] Most either sold their land in the French Grant or arranged to have tenants farm it.

What the citizens do remember we’re their war dead, a huge number. The number of Vietnam deaths closely match those of WWI. 

They also remembered the 77 people who died of yellow fever in 1778.  Up through the steamship era, the river functioned as a highway for disease, and was considered an unhealthy place to live.

If you look carefully you can see an Iron tool from the boat that brought the disease.

Gallipolis what was the second permanent village in Ohio on the river.  

As of the 2010 census which determined the population to be below the 5000 mark required in Ohio to be a city. It is now a village again.

I talked to a fisherman on the dock, asking the tiresome question, does he eat the fish.  He said no, too much mercury. Probably a lot came from coal ash from the power plants just up the river.