Mile 936.9 - LBD Ingram Drydock

936.9 LBD Ingram Drydock

Drydock operation along Columbus waterfront for servicing tows and barges. Ingram is the largest tow company operating on the Mississippi River with headquarters in Nashville. Ingram is known to be paddler friendly, but always paddle defensively and always yield right of way to all tows. Ingram began operations after WWII in 1946, but the heritage stretches back to the 1800s when the Ingram family was involved in logging in the upper Midwest. Today paddlers will daily encounter big 3-screw Ingram towboats such as the E. Bronson Ingram, The John M. Donnelly, the John R. Ingram, the Sally Bromfield, and many dozen others, sometimes pushing upwards of 42 barges (6x7) and churning the big river into a muddy froth with 8 foot tall standing waves behind the props.

Paddlers headed downstream from Columbus are entering the first stretch of “Wild Miles” on the Lower Miss. Rolling around Wolf Island, and then through Beckwith Bend, past Hickman, around Island No.8, Donaldson Point, and then into Bessie’s Bend, paddlers will get a taste of the big forests, big islands, and big waters awaiting them as they continue on downstream towards the Gulf of Mexico. According to wildmiles.org 71% of the river miles along the main channel of the Lower Mississippi give paddlers that “wild” feeling they seek (and usually have to go far away to exotic locales to find!).

What are the Wild Miles? Wild Miles are places where nature predominates and nothing is seen of mankind save passing tows (and other river traffic) and maybe a tiny hunting camp or a single fisherman buzzing by in a johnboat. These are places where the landscape is filled with giant islands bounded by endless mud banks & sandbars, where the river is overseen by big skies and where the sun sets uninterrupted by buildings or wires and where big river predominates with creative wild beauty, each high water results in shifting sand dunes and re-made sandbars. This is a floodplain valley where only deer & coyote tracks are seen along the sandbars and enormous flocks of shy birds like the White Pelican and Double Breasted Cormorant are comfortable enough to make landing for the night. These are places where it's dark & quiet at night, where the stars fill the skies like brightly shining jewels poured out on a dark purple velvet blanket, almost as thick & vibrant as the night skies of the Great Plains or Rocky Mountains.

This stretch of Wild Miles below Columbus ends at the New Madrid Harbor, where big industry and agricultural silos are again found on the river’s edge, but then again resumes further downstream (below the Arcola Plant) between Hickman and Caruthersville.