Swamplands of the Mississippi Delta Scenic swamps, cypress brakes and abundant wildlife are a treasure trove at the fingertips of outdoor enthusiasts BY DR. TODD DAVIS AND ROBIN WHITFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBIN WHITFIELD, HART HENSON AND LARRY PACE
he Mississippi Delta is best known as the catalyst for rock ‘n’ roll by way of Delta blues music. It is the home of Conway Twitty, Sam Cooke, and B. B. King, as well as the burial site for the legendary Robert Johnson.
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The National Park Service refers to the Mississippi Delta as “the cradle of American culture.” What people may not know is the Delta was a vast jungle of swamps and canebrakes. During the twentieth century, commercial agricultural significantly impacted the region through deforestation for its rich sediment and optimum growing conditions. Annual flooding was controlled by the construction of a
complex levee system yielding civilizations to sprout. The area is an agricultural portrait of success with small jewels of nature offering public access scattered within the Delta’s landscape. The Mississippi Delta is a large, flat, fertile region in west-central Mississippi formed by the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. The Mississippi Delta, although a floodplain of the Mississippi River, is the actual delta of the Yazoo River. Some seventy miles wide at the greatest point and stretching nearly two hundred miles south of Memphis to Vicksburg, the Delta is 4.4 million acres of sedimentary flatland. Indigenous people settled, inhabited, and thrived within the Mississippi Delta region from 700 A.D. well into the
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