Mile 655.5 RBD — Montezuma Towhead

A three-mile long island at low water, one mile-long at medium, no sand at 35HG, goes completely under at flood stage 44HG.  Montezuma Towhead was created when an unfortunate steamboat by the same name The Montezuma happened upon a snag in this section of river and sank on Feb 28, 1829.  Snags were not uncommon back then, steamboat pilots avoided them like the plague, as is well narrated in Mark Twain’s 1883 Life on the Mississippi.  Less well-known are the towheads, islands, bars and other important river features that have been wrought out of these wreckages as they lay on the bottom of the river and create conditions that lead to sediment accumulation on their downstream side out of the vast oceans of sediment that are always there in motion.  The emergence of Montezuma Towhead forced the entire Mississippi River eastward one mile and the ill-fated town of Delta, Mississippi, was consumed by collapsing banks.  Delta was neck-and-neck with Friars Point as the leading town of Coahoma County.  Its promising future cut short by the sinking of a steamboat and the insatiable appetite of the river.  Friars Point didn’t enjoy its glory days long as victor in this race for prominence, its place on the river left high & dry by the opposite big river tendency: to create land.   Keep reading below for the rest of the story.