If a riverbed is non-navigable, does the State of Ohio own the middle of it?

In Ohio, the ownership of non-navigable rivers differs from that of navigable rivers. When a river is classified as non-navigable, the land under the waterway does not automatically belong to the state; instead, it can be privately owned. This means that the landowners adjacent to the river typically own the riverbed up to the midpoint, effectively granting them rights over the land under the water.

The principle governing non-navigable rivers is grounded in property law, where the landowners have rights to the edge of the water, and ownership extends to the center only if the water is deemed navigable. Since a non-navigable river does not provide for public navigation, the State of Ohio does not claim ownership of its middle, which further supports that under such conditions, the land typically remains under private ownership.

This legal framework clarifies that the answer is indeed not that the state owns the middle of a non-navigable riverbed, affirming the position of private property rights relative to such waterways.