Helena to Greenville
LBD 574.5 Mouth of Lake Whittington A classic river pass, which way the water is going will demonstrate whether the river is rising or falling. Good place for quick shelter from the weather on a hot sunny day or a cold windy day. This beautiful tree-lined channel cuts through
Helena to Greenville
RBD 578.4 Napoleon Light In his rambling Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain digresses through several chapters with a drawn-out story reaching into a Bavarian mausoleum concerning the bereaved hamlet of Napoleon. Once numbering upwards of 1,000 inhabitants, Napoleon promised to become the largest city in the Lower
Helena to Greenville
LBD 581-576 Prentiss Sandbar As you round Prentiss Bend and continue downstream, past the mouth of the Arkansas River you will find a long skinny sandbar that stretches up to five miles long at low water around Monerrey Bend. At medium water this becomes a 2-mile long island that you
Helena to Greenville
RBD 580 Arkansas River The 1475 mile long Arkansas River drains all of the Great Plains from Kansas down to the Texas Panhandle, including most of Oklahoma, and everything west to the continental divide of the Colorado and New Mexico Rocky Mountains. It's the biggest and longest tributary
Helena to Greenville
RBD 585-580 Arkansas Bar The best camping in this section of river is found along the Arkansas Bar which parallels the main channel for five miles (at low water) as the river swings out into and then through Rosedale Bend. Arkansas Bar ends at the mouth of the Arkansas River.
Helena to Greenville
Muddy Waters Wilderness The section of river from Quapaw Landing down to the mouth of the Arkansas and then on down to Vicksburg has become known locally by big river paddlers as the Muddy Waters Wilderness. Not that its officially designated as such, but its definitely muddy and its definitely
Helena to Greenville
LBD 610 Hurricane Point (Dennis Landing) Steep Concrete Boat Ramp dropping precipitously into an agitated edge of a big eddy, right at the edge of the powerful currents of the main channel. Usable at water levels up to 37HG when the parking lot above starts going under water. Paddlers can
Helena to Greenville
RBD 615.5 Island 69 Old Back Channel Opens up around HG 18, strong flow at 25, forests flood out at 35. Just below Knowlton high ground is a secret back channel RBD that is well worth paddling through for excellent wildlife viewing and a vision into the big forests
Helena to Greenville
RBD 616-609 Island 69 [CLICK HERE: Map of Paddling Past Island 69] [CLICK HERE: Map of Island 69 Circumnavigation] Island 69 is an archipelago of Islands which inhabits the inside a long bend of the river, its pieces running seven river miles downstream of Knowlton, Cessions Towhead on one side,
Helena to Greenville
LBD 616-614 Cession’s Towhead For main channel visual relief you can enter the back channel behind Cession’s Towhead above the 616.1 light and follow it at first Easterly and then North-easterly one mile and then around the backside of the island for a southerly run back to
Helena to Greenville
RBD 616 Knowlton Crevasse The Mississippi River broke the levee here on the Arkansas side in 1912 and then again during the great flood of 1927 and a blue hole survives as reminder to the power of water overtopping an obstruction. A blue hole can be created anywhere flowing water
Helena to Greenville
RBD 620-617 Old Levee at Knowlton Not surprisingly the river is forever trying to break through its banks at Wood Cottage and below. In the twenty years of paddling this area I have seen countless bank stabilization projects and watched the river swallow up everything left by man, one season