Mile 951.0 - LBD Wicliffe Bluff (1st Kentucky Bluff)

John Ruskey

20 Apr 2026

951 LBD Wicliffe Bluff (1st Kentucky Bluff)

As you paddle downstream from the confluence and scan the Kentucky shoreline your eye will be attracted to a splash of yellows and oranges in cliff lines falling off the top of the verdant hills. This is the Wickliffe Bluff, the first of five prominent loess bluffs between the confluence and Hickman Kentucky. Make a landing here and explore the strange array of rocks and minerals and piles of hardened mud. Be careful of avalanches during or after rain storms, as the bluffs are known to periodically collapse. The loess bluffs are result of thousands of years of blowing dust which accumulated in giant piles along the eastern shore of the Mississippi River following the last ices age.

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