The book, The Gentle Art of Wandering, has many mentions on how maps can help you identify unusual places for a wandering adventure. As a Mapaholic, I am always going through maps looking for places to check out. And for years, I have noticed that there is a very small part of Kentucky that is completely detached from the rest of the state – the Kentucky Bend.
This is a Google Earth view of the Kentucky Bend area. It’s tucked into a loop of the Mississippi River off to the center left
The Kentucky Bend is the result of the Mississippi River’s many looping meanders and the western portion of the Kentucky/Tennessee border being set at 36° 30’ north latitude. Except for Missouri’s bootheel, 36° 30’ is also the southern border of Missouri and the line of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that set the boundary between slave and free states. When Texas applied for admission to the Union in 1845, it cut off the northern portion of the Texas Panhandle to keep the entire state below the 36° 30’ line so that Texas could be admitted as a slave state. That cutoff portion of Texas is now the Oklahoma Panhandle.
A Rand-McNally Road Map view of the Kentucky Bend area.
Although I have wondered about the Kentucky Bend for years (if not decades), it wasn’t until earlier this month that I found myself on a road trip route that took me right through the area. And when I took a closer look at the map, I saw that there were many other curiosities that I could check out at the same time. (One of the basic tenets of The Gentle Art of Wandering is that, when you get out, you’ll find more than you expected and that one thing will always lead to another.)
To begin, the Kentucky Bend is directly across the Mississippi River from New Madrid, Missouri. This puts the Bend right in the middle of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 – 1812 were among the most severe earthquakes in the Nation’s history. Reelfoot Lake, which is also in the immediate area, was created by the New Madrid Earthquakes. (Reelfoot Lake, like the Kentucky Bend, has been on my awareness scope for decades.) And finally, I also noticed that there was a Ferry service in the immediate area connecting Hickman, Kentucky to Missouri on the other side of the Mississippi River. And as an added bonus, I also saw on a list of New Deal Post Office Murals that Hickman’s Post Office has a New Deal Mural.
In short, there would plenty for us to check out within a small piece of geography. All of this discovered by reading a map!
We quickly discovered that the Kentucky Bend truly is isolated from the rest of Kentucky when it took us over a half-hour of driving though small country roads in Tennessee to reach the Bend from the rest of Kentucky. When you get to the Bend, you won’t find any towns. All you’ll find are a few farms and plenty of corn and soybean fields. In fact, the only paved road in the Bend ended at a soybean field. There wasn’t even a Welcome to Kentucky sign when we crossed into the Bend. There was, however, a Historical Marker sign about the border.
Kentucky begins where the Yellow Line ends,
Looking back into Tennessee.
The paved road ended at this No Trespassing sign.
A closer look revealed that we were looking at a Soybean field.
And if you look closely, you can see that Kudzu is starting to overwhelm the trees bordering the Soybean field.
It would have been nice to get a look at the Mississippi River while we were at the Bend, but any possible view or access was cut off by the flood control levees that completely enclose the Kentucky Bend.
Although there wasn’t much to see within the Kentucky Bend, it was still a worthwhile stop to satisfy a long-time curiosity.
With Reelfoot Lake almost next door, it became our next stop. As mentioned earlier, Reelfoot Lake was created by the 1811-12 earthquakes. And if you look at a topo map of the Mississippi River area, you’ll notice how the Mississippi River has changed its course and meanders many times to leave a series of backwater sloughs and former channels. Reelfoot Lake was undoubtedly created when the earthquake deepened an old river channel, compacted the underlying soil enough to hold water, and cutoff possible outlets to turn an abandoned channel into a lake. And I am sure that during the earthquake that the Mississippi River bounced all over the place to fill it with water.
That’s Reelfoot Lake up ahead.
As you can see, it’s quite large.
The Bald Cypress Knees along the edge of the Lake were very cool.
And if you check out some of the backwater areas, you have a good chance of seeing wildlife.
Reelfoot Lake turned out to be pretty cool and much larger than I expected. I am sure it offers nearby residents plenty of options for hiking, exploring, and outdoor recreation.
With both the Kentucky Bend and Reelfoot Lake taken care of, it was now time to cross back into Kentucky to check out the Post Office Mural in Hickman, Kentucky and to take the ferry across the Mississippi River over to Missouri to continue our Road Trip.
As you can see, Hickman’s New Deal Post Office Mural celebrates the town’s river heritage.
Whatever buildings that were near the HIckman Post Office are now gone.
In fact, most of the nearby commercial buildings are now vacant, but there is a cool mural of Mark Twain.
The flood wall surrounding the town center has over a dozen murals depicting the town’s past.
The Ferry to Missouri is tucked into a harbor like Bayou off to the side of the Mississippi River.
There were plenty of other barges and towboats nearby including this one pushing gravel.
And here are some empty barges being loaded with material.
And there’s Missouri on the other side of the Mississippi River. As you can see, the river is quite wide.
And to add more to our day on the road, we ran into a complete surprise and total bonus, about an hour after getting off the ferry in Missouri, when we spotted an old shut-down art deco style Coca Cola bottling plant as we drove through Blytheville, Arkansas.
The former Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in Blytheville, Arkansas.
The bottom line is that none of this would have happened without reading a map!
September 27, 2026 at 8:51 pm
I am also a card-carrying Mapholic and enjoyed the article. Some friends and I recently took a 6-day bicycle tour of northern NM — in other words, lots of mountains. After struggling over Bobcat Pass on loaded touring bikes, someone joked that our next trip should be down the Mississippi because “it’s all downhill.” After reading your article, I immediately went to the web to look for suitable bike routes along Old Man River; turns out there is an approximately 2000 mile mapped route that starts at the headwaters and follows bike paths, rail trails, and paved roads all the way south. Thanks for the inspiration!
September 27, 2026 at 7:03 pm
I live in a similar situation here in New Mexico. We are north of Navajo Lake and south of the Colorado boundary, no way to get here from the rest of NM without going through CO.
September 27, 2026 at 6:00 pm
I also noticed the Kentucky Bend years ago on a map of the United States. Never got to see it in-person, though. There are many other map/boundary oddities like that when you start looking at maps and how boundaries were drawn originally. Point Roberts in Washington state is another one of interest. Also, Staten Island should technically (or legally) be part of New Jersey, not New York. And there are others. The whole story behind each one would make for a good book for map lovers.