The Great Miami Riverway

The Great Miami Riverway is more than just a river. This regional destination in southwest Ohio includes more than 99 miles of paved trails and connected communities where you can surf the river, cycle the bike trail, and find your way through charming downtowns.

- The Great Miami Riverway is home to 11 nationally recognized experiences.

- We think you should build your business here, but you should come visit us first.

- Treat yourself to a top 10 steakhouse, or a top 10 bourbon bar to seal the deal.

- The Great Miami Riverway is the first National Water Trail in Ohio. We are home to the nation’s largest paved trail network.

Find Your Way.

The Great Miami Riverway is a program of the Miami Conservancy District, convened with local communities, to support and encourage people to live, work, and play safely along the Great Miami River. 

Promoting growth

The Great Miami Riverway is building a strong, vibrant network of communities, connected by 99 miles of river, by increasing economic and community investment to attract more visitors, customers, jobs, and talented workers to southwest Ohio.

The goal of the Great Miami Riverway program is to develop and implement ongoing marketing, planning, and programming to:

• Increase use of recreational, historical, and cultural assets,
• Attract more visitors,
• Support economic development,
• Strengthen river corridor neighborhoods

Over $500 million in riverfront investments have been completed over the last 10 years in communities along the Great Miami Riverway. Our partners have invested $1 million into the Riverway and we continue to grow. Tapping into a $43 billion tourism market in Ohio, we see a bright future and a positive today. We encourage you to explore, invest, create, and find your way in the Great Miami Riverway.

Recent Awards

 

History

MCD and the University of Dayton (UD) co-hosted the first Great Miami River Summit on the UD campus in 2008. The goals of the Summit were to develop a set of recommendations to stimulate river corridor investments in the cities; to share plans for riverfront development and to explore opportunities to leverage individual projects into a collective power; to discuss and explore their shared interests in successful cities and farmland preservation; and for Great Miami River stakeholders to begin to develop a shared vision of the river as an economic driver, unifying force, and competitive advantage for the region. Approximately one hundred community leaders participated which led to a volunteer group, the Ohio’s Great Corridor Association, who worked on river-related opportunities. In 2012, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was commissioned by the Montgomery County Commissioners and MCD to perform a study of the river corridor. The study, released in 2014, was the largest river corridor asset inventory ever conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The key result: the creation of a unified identity for the river corridor to be used to promote the wide variety and enormous wealth of assets including places and events. In 2017, at the request of the river corridor communities, MCD launched the Riverway program under its River Corridor Improvement Subdistrict with 19 riverfront communities and organizations.