Mile 568.0 - Chicot Landing
RBD 568 Chicot Landing
Note: Boat ramp not marked on the US Army Corps 2007 maps. Unimproved public gravel landing off the end of a stub levee above Arkansas City. You won't always be able to drive to the water's edge, but paddler's should have no trouble finding access at any water levels. Low water leaves the bottom end of the ramp covered in a muddy bog. High water means finding access off the stub levee. A great daytrip including a stop on Choctaw Island could be be made using this as your put-in, paddling downstream to the back channel of Choctaw Island, making a picnic stop on the top end or backside of the Island, and then taking out at the Arkansas City Boat Ramp (halfway down the back channel).
The old steamboat era Chicot Landing is further downstream, just above the entrance to Choctaw back channel. The splinter islands crowding the right bank around mile 565 are still covered with gnarly flood ravaged forests and piles of driftwood that when covered in water become ugly snags -- and confirm the name given by early French Voyageurs, chicot meaning teeth.
The catastrophic Holly Brush Crevasse occurred near here and submerged all of southeastern Arkansas in the 1903 flood.
Approaching Choctaw Island
As you come out of Cypress Bend stay with the fastest waters along the outside of the bend right bank and whisk past Chicot Landing and the bottom of Catfish Point Bar. Several miles downstream the top end of Choctaw Island will be coming into view. The main channel of the river opens up into a wide morass of flowing water almost as wide as the entire downstream horizon. As you float along a giant sandbar begins to take form along the curve of the earth. This is the top end of Choctaw Island, so enormous it makes the Mississippi River split both ways! If you're planning on ending your journey at Arkansas City, you'll want to enter the back channel with the wedge of water flowing south behind the island. If you're continuing on to Greenville or the Highway 82 Bridge near Lake Village, you can paddle either side of the island. Main channel might be faster, but of course its not as scenic. Back channel stays open until the lowest of lows. Keep the paddler's mantra in mind, if its flowing in, its flowing out. Even if there is no noticeable flow you still might want to explore the wildlife rich back channel. Watch for shoaling and be ready to drag your vessel if necessary.
Choctaw Island Geomorphology
The river rolls around Cypress Bend and dives into the depths below the base of Catfish Point Bar; from there it picks up speed and momentum as the river bottom shallows above Choctaw Bar Island. During higher water levels anything pliable (such as sand or gravel) or plastic (such as mud) gets uprooted from the bottom of the river and is plastered over the increasing shallows above Choctaw and then pushed south in giant sugary piles over the entire 4 mile perimeter of the top of the island. You can see the effect from Google Earth. It looks the island has been hit by a snowball of sand, long trails of yellow/white sand lead out of the desert top end and wander south into the muddy middle beyond, where the elevation drops just enough that all of the sand is left behind and only muddy waters enter, and then become stationary and deposit their silty load. Grasslands have grown around the perimeter of this open belly wetlands, and above the grassy ridges is where the land rises enough to support more permanent species of hardwoods, the trees that don't like their feet in the water but a month or two out of the year, if at all. Continuing south down the length of the island various narrow finger channels collect the floodwaters out of the muddy belly of the island and funnel them roundly south and then southeast parallel to the main channel to empty out near the bottom end of the island. After the river drops you can walk down the lower island over these alternating ridges and gullies, tall trees on top and murky plankton-rich green stillwater in between. Frogs abound in these pools of captured water. During spring mating season (March-May) the night air resounds with the emphatic calls of this amphibious chorus, at times so loud you can hear them from miles away. If you set your tent nearby you will awake the next morning your head buzzing from the effects of the all-night party!