Wheeling Creek is a tributary of the Ohio River, 25 miles (40 km) long, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, with a watershed extending into southwestern Pennsylvania. Via the Ohio River, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area of approximately 300 square miles (780 km2) on the unglaciated portion of the Allegheny Plateau. It flows into the Ohio River in downtown Wheeling, just downstream of Ohio's Wheeling Creek on the opposite bank. A variant name is Big Wheeling Creek. According to the French explorer Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, the native name of the stream is the Kanououara River, as was inscribed on the lead plate buried at the mouth by the Ohio River in 1749.