Wolf River

(Tennessee)

Wolf River
Bottomland forest and wetland in the Wolf River's uppermost headwaters
Origin	Baker's Pond, Holly Springs National Forest, near Walnut, Mississippi 35°56′41″N, 89°01′28″W
Mouth	Mississippi River at Downtown Memphis, Tennessee 35°10′57″N, 90°03′25″W
Basin countries	United States
Length	90 mi (145 km)
Source elevation	540 ft (165 m)
Mouth elevation	210 ft (64 m)
Avg. discharge	1,327 ft³/s (404 m³/s)
Basin area	889 mi² (1432 km²)

The Wolf River's watershed is 889 square miles in surface area, including parts of Shelby and Fayette counties in Tennessee and Benton County, Mississippi.

The Wolf River was designated an American Heritage River by presidential proclamation in 1997.

The Wolf River at Germantown, Tennessee after two days of heavy thunderstorms

The Wolf River is a small alluvial river of West Tennessee and North Mississippi, whose confluence with the Mississippi River was the site of various Chickasaw, French, Spanish and American communities and forts that eventually became Memphis, Tennessee.

Location

The Wolf River rises in the Holly Springs National Forest at Baker's Pond in Benton County north of Ashland and flows northwest into Tennessee, draining a large portion of Memphis and northern and eastern Shelby County before entering the Mississippi River near the northern end of Mud Island, north of downtown Memphis.

Note: This river should not be confused with the Wolf River of Middle Tennessee which flows along the Cumberland Plateau nor should its headwaters in North Mississippi be confused with the estuarine Wolf River that flows past Pass Christian, Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico via St. Louis Bay.

Cities and towns located in the Wolf River's watershed

listed in downstream order from source to mouth

Ashland, Mississippi
Canaan, Mississippi
Michigan City, Mississippi
La Grange, Tennessee
Moscow, Tennessee
Rossville, Tennessee
Piperton, Tennessee
Collierville, Tennessee
Germantown, Tennessee
Bartlett, Tennessee
Raleigh, a former seat of Shelby County, Tennessee, long since incorporated into Memphis.
Memphis, Tennessee

Wildlife

The Wolf River area is home to deer, otter, mink, bobcat, fox, coyote, turkey and a wide variety of waterfowl. Migrating osprey, great egret, and bald eagle have been spotted along this river as well. There are Tennessee state record trees located in its bottomland forests, including a Tupelo Gum that is 17 feet in circumference. Other hardwoods include green ash, red maple, swamp chestnut oak, blackgum, and the majestic bald cypress. Native flowering plants include cardinal flower, ironweed, swamp iris, false loosestrife, spatterdock, swamp rose, blue phlox and spring cress.

Beneath the Wolf River’s surface, 25 species of freshwater mussels (unionidae) have been documented. Their dependence on good water quality makes them vulnerable to pollution.

A growing number of these species of plants and animals can be found in the urban reaches of the Wolf in Memphis, as the legacy of community action and the Clean Water Act slowly heals the degraded downstream section.

History

The Wolf River is estimated to be about 12,000 years old, formed by Midwestern glacier runoff carving the region’s soft alluvial soil. It is one of many rivers in West Tennessee and Mississippi that prompted the Chickasaw to call the region "the land that leaks."

During a multi-river voyage from Chicago, Illinois to Biloxi, Mississippi, Jesuit priest Jacques Gravier made the following journal entry for 26 October, 1700, after reaching the mouth of the Wolf:

"We passed the Riviere a Mayot [Wolf] on the south, from the name of a savage of the Delaware nation who was of Mr. de la Salle's party. This river does not seem to be very large, but is said to be a good hunting ground, and that the Chickacha come to its mouth, from which they are only three days‚ journey, cutting south inland."

M. Winslow Chapman published vivid descriptions of the Wolf River in its natural state (pre-channelization) in her 1977 memoir, I Remember Raleigh:

“ To form any picture of [the river's environs] we must forget what we now see and imagine the Wolf as it was then, a clear, spring-fed stream slipping silently along through the endless forest, where the unbroken shade shielded it from the fierce Southern sunshine and kept it flowing fresh and cool all summer long...

The water was fresh and sweet, flowing out of the uncontaminated woods, but gradually this condition changed. As more and more land upstream was cultivated, more silt was washed into the river. After each rain it took longer for the stream to clear, and finally, with the establishment of the Penal Farm [today’s Shelby Farms] with all its disagreeable effluvia, swimming became impossible...

Gone now forever from this spot are the cane brake and the horses; the tall timber and the mysterious river, where hard by, on Austin Peay Bridge auto traffic streams triumphant, night and day in one unceasing roar, all oblivious of the life and history buried down below.”

—M. Winslow Chapman, I Remember Raleigh, 1977, Riverside Press, Memphis. Excerpts are displayed here with permission of the author's estate.

William Faulkner, a native of the nearby Tallahatchie Basin, was inspired to describe these swampy, untamed rivers as "the thick, slow, black, unsunned streams almost without current, which once each year ceased to flow at all and then reversed, spreading, drowning the rich land and subsiding again, leaving it still richer" in the short story "The Bear" from Go Down, Moses.

Timeline

The Wolf River's watershed (everything above the red dotted line), as surveyed in 1740 by Ignace François Broutin, chief engineer of French Louisiana. The French had named the Wolf "Riviere a Margot"

Wolf River Harbor, at Downtown Memphis, was formerly the lowermost channel of the Wolf River before its 1960 diversion by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The old mouth of the Wolf River is visible in the upper-right corner, framed by the I-40 and Mud Island Monorail bridges.

10,000 BCE Wolf River formed by runoff from melting glacier shelf.
800-1500 CE Mississippian culture rises and declines in this area, evidenced by mound sites and accounts by Hernando de Soto.
1300-1700 CE Chickasaw nation settles northern Mississippi, western Tennessee, and eastern Arkansas.
1682 French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle claims the region near the mouth of the Wolf River. The French alternately called the river Riviere de Mayot (or Margot), Blackbird River, and Riviere de Loup.

The original Loup was rumored to be a Delaware Indian guide who disappeared along the river while guiding the French. The Delawares were also known as Les Loups or "The Wolves." According to one account, both the English and Chickasaw afterwards called the river "Loup" in their respective languages: "Wolf" and "Nashoba."

1740 Non-local native American scouts working for the French at Fort Assumption (Memphis) survey the Wolf as a possible military supply route from which to destroy Ackia, a Chickasaw stronghold near Tupelo that weathered an attack four years eariler. The group turned back near present-day Germantown, Tennessee, a town that briefly adopted the name "Neshoba" out of anti-German sentiment during the United States' involvement in World War I.
1795 Concerned about American activities in their territory along the east bank of the Mississippi River, the Spanish colonial government sends Manuel Gayoso de Lemos to erect Fort San Fernando de las Barrancas near the Chickasaw Bluffs at the mouth of the Wolf River. The fort was dismantled in 1797 in accordance with Pinckney's Treaty.
Early 1800s The Wolf River is declared navigable, from Memphis to La Grange, by the Tennessee General Assembly, which appropriated funds to remove obstructions for keel boat travel.
1825 British-born Frances Wright establishes the Nashoba Commune on the Wolf River at the present-day site of Germantown, Tennessee. The commune's purpose was to educate and emancipate slaves using proceeds from the sale of crops grown there. [1]
1888 Memphis stops using Wolf River as its principal source of drinking water, switching to artesian wells, which are still used and which are recharged by the Wolf's watershed.
1960 Because of its foul odor, the Wolf is dammed near its mouth and diverted into the Mississippi north of Mud Island. The section of the Wolf downstream of this channel diversion became a slackwater harbor of the Mississippi known today as Wolf River Harbor, which separates Mud Island (actually a peninsula) from the Memphis "mainland."
Mid-1960s Completion of channelization of the Wolf from the Mississippi upstream to Gray's Creek, east of Germantown, Tennessee resulting in a lowered riverbed and diminished wetland habitat.
1970 Surface drainage, sewage, and industrial pollution caused a group of scientists and environmentalists to pronounce the river "dead" around Memphis.
1977 Mary Winslow Chapman publishes I Remember Raleigh, which including vivid descriptions of a pre-channelized Wolf River (early to middle 20th Century).
1985 Wolf River Conservancy founded by an alliance of conservation-minded real estate executives and local environmental advocates.
1995 "Ghost River" section of the Wolf saved from timber auction by a coordinated effort of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, local conservation activists Lucius Burch and W.S. "Babe" Howard, and the WRC.
1997 Wolf River is designated an American Heritage River by presidential proclamation under a special EPA program.

Singer-Songwriter Jeff Buckley drowns during an evening swim in Wolf River Harbor.

1998 First recorded full descent of the Wolf River completed by members of the Wolf River Conservancy.
2004 City of Memphis' Wolf River Greenway (22-mile trail) master plan completed and then shelved (pending approval)
2005 Commencement of the Wolf River Restoration Project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis Office to stop rapid erosion known as "headcutting" at Collierville, Tennessee.
2006 Loop trail completed by the U.S. Forest Service in the Holly Springs National Forest (Mississippi) near Baker's Pond, the source of the Wolf River.
2007 "Middle Wolf" Campaign - attempted sprawl-proofing of the western Fayette County section.
2007-2012 Completion of the Collierville-Arlington Parkway segment of Tenn-385 and I-269 outer loop expressway, including two (and potentially five) interchanges poised to become major drivers of suburban growth into forested sections of the Wolf River's floodplain and the surface-exposed sections of the Memphis Sands aquifer.

Bottomland hardwood swamp at the confluence of Tubby Creek and the Wolf River in the Holly Springs National Forest near Ashland, Mississippi. This location was considered to be the Wolf's head of navigation at the time of the first known full descent of the river, completed in 1998 by members of the Wolf River Conservancy who hiked or waded from the river's source at Baker's Pond to this point and traveled by canoe to the river's confluence with the Mississippi River.

Identified public benefits

According to the Wolf River Conservancy, the Wolf River serves the Mid-South in four distinct ways:

Flood/Erosion Control During heavy rains, the Wolf’s floodplain and wetlands temporarily store floodwaters. When these are filled in for development, the river loses these natural release valves, causing increases in river velocity and flood height. Without an adequate floodplain, floodwaters and the erosion caused by them threaten property, transportation, and lives.

Water Quality The Memphis metropolitan area and other Mid-South communities receive drinking water from a pure underground aquifer beneath the Wolf River Basin. The Wolf’s fragile wetlands hold water long enough for it to be absorbed into the ground and serve as natural filters to cleanse polluted waters before they reach the aquifer.

Wildlife Habitat As described above, Wolf River is alive with deer, otter, mink, bobcat, fox, coyote, turkey and a wide variety of waterfowl. Migrating osprey, great egret, and bald eagle have been spotted along the river as well.

Low-Impact Recreation While civilization has long surrounded the Wolf River’s floodplain, its wetland and bottomland trails provide Mid-Southerners with scenic wilderness experiences from the Holly Springs National Forest all the way to Downtown Memphis. Hikers, runners, sportsmen, cyclists and paddlers experience nature on or near the river every day.

Side-channel at Germantown, Tennessee

External links

Wolf River Conservancy site
American Heritage Rivers (EPA)
TDEC profile of the Ghost River State Natural Area near Moscow and La Grange, Tennessee
Sierra Club's "water sentinels" profile of Wolf River Harbor (2003)
Memphis Flyer article about canoeing the Bateman Road-to-Moscow section (1997)
Shelby Farms Park Alliance
Greening Greater Memphis movement
Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation
Wolf River Conservancy's Flickr group, gallery of photographs of the Wolf River and its environs, taken by WRC members and supporters.
"Hunting the Wolf River Wildlife Management Area", Tennessee Sportsman (2003)
official TWRA map of Wolf River Wildlife Management Area (adjacent to TDEC's Ghost River State Natural Area)
Cypress Creek Environmental Program, site sponsored by Velsicol Chemical Corporation as part of its cleanup efforts along this Wolf River tributary in North Memphis.
Fayette County entry, Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture

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