Mile 437.0 - Miles 437-435: LBD Walnut Hills (Mississippi Loess Bluff #1)

437 - 435 LBD Walnut Hills (Mississippi Loess Bluff #1)

The river dives to over 200 feet as it comes around Delta Point through Centennial Cutoff, forced downward by the Walnut Hills upon which Vicksburg sits. The turbulent action of the water carving deeper and deeper through the Mississippi Mud makes this one of the deepest holes along the entire Mississippi River.

When the water is below 30 in the Vicksburg Gage, horizontal cliff loess cliffs emerge below the City of Vicksburg Riverfront Park at 436.5 RBD, providing a special view into the geology of the bluffs, which is everywhere else covered by trees, vines, and other thick vegetation. From here downstream to Baton Rouge the loess bluffs express themselves to view, and each one is distinct. This first one was named Nogales by the Spanish Pioneers, and is the least colorful of all the bluffs, a monotone grey (except for one splash of color at the very end, a hump of yellow orange, similar to colors seen further downstream). The horizontal layering is probably due to the way the dust settled in layers tens of thousands of years ago after the melting of the continental ice caps. The scouring action of the river has rounded all of the hard edges of the rock, giving it a friendly feel.

Paddlers can pull off into the slow water usually found along the bluffs and get close to this unique topography. Landings are possible on some flat rounded shelves, or in a pile of sand deposited in some alcoves where a loess boulder broke off and created a harbor below. Make a landing and take a walk to get the feel of the loess formation, but watch out for upstream tows whose passing might make big waves along the shore.

The bluffs are best seen below the Riverfront Park at mile 436 LBD (these emerge around 30VG) and a second expression below the bridge at 435 LBD (emerge around 20VG). The second exposed bluffs form broad shelves of rock, sand and mud below 15Vg which would afford a unique low water campsite for anyone needing an overnight directly below Vicksburg. As stated earlier, the best high water camping near Vicksburg would be at Delta Point opposite the mouth of the Yazoo.

Greatest Dust Storm Ever

The Mississippi Loess Bluffs tower above the river the result of massive dust storms that blew across the Great Plains ten thousand years ago and picked up dried sediment off of 22 million acres of dried glacial dust between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico. It was a Great Dust Storm on steroids, millions of acres of pulverized and dried sediment leftover from the melting of the last ice age (when the continental ice cap retreated northward, yielding its great stores of water into a labyrinth of lacerated streams, all twisting and writhing in snake-like mating season fecundity, forming and reforming channels and carving the Middle and Lower Mississippi valleys at the same time, and the Ohio River valley also, the sum of which was twenty times the present volume of the Mississippi, in the same league as the contemporary flow of the Amazon).

Thousands of years of blowing dust borne by the wild winds of the west hit the calming moisture-rich floodplain of the big valley and was brought to rest by the relatively peaceful atmosphere in giant dunes over its eastern edge, all loess dunes are found east of the Mississippi River. And like all dunes they were piled in repeating patterns of big piles and small piles and no piles at all, tributary valleys in between. And like all wave or ripple patterns they left behind a syncopated miasma of big bluffs and small bluffs rising out of the otherwise flat landscape of the Lower Mississippi Floodplain.

Bluff Beat

Like a deep earth drumbeat, the river and the bluffs resound in a profound resonance, the biggest river in North America periodically bouncing its muddy belly against the biggest piles of earth in this region. If you make note of the Mississippi River mileage in accordance to where the river comes closest to the bluffs, a simple pattern becomes evident. From the Vicksburg Bluff downstream it’s 28 miles to the Big Black Bluff at Grand Gulp (409). Then another 15 to the next bluff at Petit Gulf Hills (394). 31 miles to the Natchez Bluffs (363). 16 to the Ellis Cliffs (347) above Old St. Catherine Creek. 35 to the Clark Creek Bluffs (312). Around Angola 20 miles to reach the Tunica Hills (292). 37 miles more to the next bluff at Thompson Creek Bluffs(255) below Thompson Creek, near Port Hudson. 20 miles further brings the river past the very last loess bluff, Istrouma Bluff, which Baton Rouge is built on. So there is some pattern there: 28 - 15 - 31 - 16 - 35 - 20 - 37 - 20, a repeating rhythm of a strong beat followed by a softer beat, kind of a like a blues shuffle, a strong beat followed by a backbeat, the sound of horse-hoofs clopping down a cobblestone alley, or the hammering piston arm of a stern-wheeled steamboat steaming up the Mississippi valley. Why would the river and the bluffs create this kind of repeating pattern? Some geologist or hydrologist will have to answer that question. If you have any input, please leave a comment online on this page, or write me john@island63.com, or 291 Sunflower Avenue, Clarksdale, MS, 38614. Thank you!

The Nine Mississippi Loess Bluffs

Mississippi Loess Bluff #1 -- Walnut Hills (Vicksburg)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #2 -- Big Black Bluff (Grand Gulf)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #3 -- Petit Gulf Hills (Bondurant)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #4 -- Natchez Bluffs (Natchez)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #5 -- Ellis Cliffs (Old St. Catherine Creek)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #6 -- Clark Creek Bluffs (Fort Adams)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #7 -- Tunica Hills (Angola)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #8 -- Thompson Creek Bluffs (Port Hudson)

Mississippi Loess Bluff #9 -- Istrouma Bluff (Baton Rouge)

There are no levees on the Mississippi side south of Vicksburg due to these loess hills, along which is found a series of towns (Port Gibson, Lorman, Natchez, Fort Adams), and many farms, trailer parks, stores, ranches and homesteads in between. The loess bluffs are lacerated by a large family of noted Mississippi streams like the Big Black River, Bayou Pierre and the Homochitto River. In between Vicksburg and Baton Rouge paddlers will find these loess bluffs crowding up along the river’s channel like a return of the Chickasaw Bluffs or the Kentucky Hills, and then retreating in the distance nowhere to be seen. In fact they never retreat too far back over the forests. Highway 61 rides along their edge not ten miles back from the river in most places.