Mile 949.0 - Miles 949-946: LBD Island No. 1

949 - 946 LBD Island No. 1

A small indication of what’s to come downstream, Island No. 1 rises to its full height with its best camping below the small forest of scrubby willows near mile 948. Note: On the Lower Mississippi River, make sure there are no oncoming storms, and no forecast for wind, before camping on an open beach. Many a voyageur has chased their tents and sometimes even their canoes down the sandbars in front line winds. Unless the weather is perfectly calm (or cool enough you don’t need shade) you will want to make camp near or under the scrubby island forests when camping on the big open bars of the Lower Miss.

A gravel is found top end of Island No. 1, with sand alongside midships, and at the bottom end. Gravel bars yield a wide variety of rocks, fossils, coral, petrified wood, and other hard objects that might have travelled hundreds of miles getting here. Island No 1 commands the channel here with huge sandbars at low water (between 10 and 20 CG), which gradually diminish as the water rises. At 30 CG very little dry ground remains and by 35 the entire island is under water. Best protected camping between 20 and 25 CG.

Island No. 1 is a special place being the first numbered island, and the first true island with possible camping on the Lower Mississippi River. All of the numbered islands were so designated by Zadok Cramer when he wrote the 1801 best selling The Navigator, from which The Rivergator gets its name.

Cramer's charts were crude, but his text was useful and he performed a unique service when he ignored the names of most of the islands in the river and gave them numbers. Until that time, some of the islands had had several names and it was always difficult for a flatboatman to obtain and remember useful information about reaches of the river that contained no distinguishing characteristics except an island or two. The island numbers made it easier to pinpoint and identify the difficult passages on the river. Cramer told the navigators that Island No.1 was about 1 mile long and lay close to the left shore. He warned them that the channel behind it was not navigable and told them to take the channel to the right, or west, of the island at all stages of the water. Cramer's book, The Navigator, proved to be so useful and so popular that twelve editions of it were published, often with revisions that informed the boatmen about the new river towns that were springing up and about political events such as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the West Florida rebellion a few years later. Cramer was followed by many imitators who either copied him brazenly or leaned heavily on his book for information.

Many of the islands that Cramer numbered in 1801 have now joined a shoreline, and some have completely disappeared. Island No.1 has become a part of the Kentucky mainland, but a towhead by the same name has appeared in the Island No. 1 Dikes.

(Braggs: Historic Names and Places)

The Rivergator adopts the names of nearby Islands or geographic locations for some of the newer islands which have sprouted up in and amongst the dike fields.