Mile 449.0 RBD — 445 Sparta Island

John Ruskey

26 Apr 2026 � 1 min read

As you slide into Marshall Cut-Off, and if the water is above 25 Vicksburg Gauge you can stay right bank and cut behind Sparta Island to re-enter the river three miles downstream near Brown’s Point. In 1999, I was leading a group of high school students from Denver Colorado on a 5-day expedition from Greenville to Vicksburg. We were planning our Vicksburg take-out on Day 5. Vicksburg was only ten miles downstream and the excitement was building. But the river gods had other ideas in store for us. A line of severe thunderstorms hit us as we paddled down along Milliken Bend, sheets of rain and we were forced to take shelter out of the wind behind Sparta. The storms continued all day and we abandoned plans for takeout, but instead hoisted our thirty

foot long voyageur canoes out of the river and made a voyageur shelter by leaning them against some paddles and attaching lean-to tarps out from the belly. This became our shelter for the next three days as the winds and the storms thrashed relentlessly us from all sides. All seventeen of us huddling under our river storm shelter. Eleven inches of rain fell in four days. The teacher on board thought he had set his tent under a waterfall. But no, it was just the torrential rainfall of the Mississippi Valley. The high school kids had a blast, and why not? They were missing an additional four days of school and getting to play in the rain. They saw more rain that week than parts of Colorado receive in a year! Eventually the storms passed, and a strong cold front swept across the valley and we were able to leave our storm camp. I still hear from some of those students from time to time, and the teacher and I have become friends for life. Oh, and one of the students ended up marrying one of my guides. But that’s another story for another time.

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