Mile 951.0 - LBD Wickliffe Cross (Jefferson Hill Memorial Cross)

951 LBD Wickliffe Cross (Jefferson Hill Memorial Cross)

Kayaker Jerry Bell “married the Mississippi” when he threw his old wedding band in the water and swore to “honor and protect” his newlywed below this 90 foot tall cross officially known as the Jefferson Hill Memorial Cross. Jerry and his pipe-fitter buddies smoked 10,000 Marlboro cigarettes to win an inflatable 10 foot kayak. He paddled out of his Indiana homeland down the Wabash, into the Ohio, and then on down to this confluence. After marrying the Mississippi, he honeymooned downstream until puncturing the kayak flotation on stainless steel revetment wire. When he reached Memphis he was floating in the water with his gear tied up in a garbage bag. After several years of camping at the mouth of the Wolf River above Memphis, Jerry found an aluminum canoe and finished the honeymoon all the way to New Orleans. He lost this canoe in Katrina but he rode out the hurricane in a tent. The storm surge lifted him into a tree. He climbed down when it receded and survived as a refugee scavenging food scraps and liquor bottles from the debris.