Mile 921.5 - LBD 4th Kentucky Bluff: Hickman, Kentucky

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026 � 2 min read

921.5 LBD 4th Kentucky Bluff: Hickman, Kentucky

Hickman, Kentucky sits on top of the 4th Kentucky Bluff, which is the last of the Kentucky Bluffs. Goodbye hills; hullo delta! Hickman the last of any evidence that paddlers will see of high ground for another 140 miles downstream. The next high ground is found amongst the Chickasaw Bluffs of Tennessee, which make their first river appearance near Fort Pillow (at the spectacular 1st Chickasaw Bluff).

From Cairo to Hickman the big river follows a predominantly southerly course with some gentle meandering. Maybe the shock of meeting each other has required 40 miles to work things out between the Ohio and the Mississippi. Below Hickman things change. The Lower Mississippi takes on its true nature as a wild creative force, a land gobbling snake slipping outwards ten or twenty miles in one direction to rotate around a colossal river bend so long you can’t tell if its straight or rounded, a classic curving floodplain river of global scale. Below Hickman the big river begins making some of the giant turns it is so famous for. In the thirty mile run to New Madrid, the river makes three of these mega turns. The first comes in the convoluted course around Island No. 8. The second is the 180 degree turn around Donaldson Point. The last is compass turning Bessie’s Bend, which takes paddlers in an almost complete circle around the floodplain with New Madrid at the northernmost quadrant. Everyone has different names for this meandering propensity of the Lower Mississippi River. National Geographic called it “Where the Big River gets Lost.” I have heard some paddlers refer to it as the “Twilight Zone,” because the curves leave you a little confused about where exactly you are and where you’re heading. I have heard some tow pilots call it simply “The Wiggles.” Whatever you call it it is definitely a river of a whole different order of magnitude than what you’ve been paddling on the Middle Mississippi. It seems to have taken on its own vital life force, some creation in which the sum is greater than its parts. Furthermore, it seems to have become alive in a way that it wasn’t before, with a mostly benign character, but one that can turn humorless in a turn of a vicious eddy. Finally, it commands so much of your vision - and the atmosphere around you - it is no longer a landscape, it is a riverscape. Whether you are on the island, the sandbar, or the muddy waters, the river dominates it all.

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