Mile 819.3 - Mouth of the Obion River

LBD 819.3 Mouth of the Obion River

The Obion is the biggest Mississippi River tributary in Northwestern Tennessee, but unfortunately its entrance into the big river is diminished by the unsightly placement of a small industrial docking in the form of a gravel operations. Gravel is dredged from the bottom of the Mississippi River and used on land for road building and concrete. Undoubtedly this ugly floating dock & separator was placed at the mouth of the Obion to take advantage of the smaller river’s scouring action. But this seems like an insulting way to herald the entrance of noble Obion which provides irrigation and drinking water for all of this corner of Tennessee, including nearby Dyersburg and environ via its famous tributaries the Forked Deer.

Adventuresome paddlers could make a detour by paddling their canoe or kayak or stand-up-paddleboard up the Obion and explore the bottomlands of western Tennessee. The channel is lined by fields of corn and soybeans for several miles up to the junction of the Forked Deer, and here the noble forests are protected when you cross the boundary of Moss Island WMA.

Marion Bragg’s Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi reports that “One of the legends connected with the Obion is that Davy Crockett killed 105 bears near the mouth of the river. The story may be true, for most of the early explorers and early settlers who recorded their experiences mentioned that bears were very plentiful along the banks of the Mississippi before the wilderness was overrun with people.”

39 miles upstream the Obion/Forked Deer is Dyersburg, NW Tennessee’s largest population and cultural/education center. Home of Dyersburg State Community College. Biologist Dr. Ken Jones of DSCC has conducted colony counts of the endangered Least Tern for the past twenty years down the Middle and Lower Mississippi River. On some islands on some ideal years the count has exceeded 3,000 colonies. Other years (notably 2011) the count was negligible due to the flood which occurred during mating season.

The Mississippi River Corridor-Tennessee has been working for years to create a “blueway” to run the rivers from the Forked Deer River in Dyersburg, Tenn., onto the Obion and then follow the Mississippi River to Memphis. This effort coincides with the slow but steady rise of recreational paddlers on the Lower Mississippi -- which not coincidentally is the primary reason the Rivergator guide is now being written and published!

Moss Island WMA (State Wildlife Management Area) inhabits a lowlands created by a former channel of the Mississippi River. The Obion river has follows the outside of this ancient bend, while the Forked Deer enters at its southern edge.