The Jamie L. Whitten Bridge carries the Natchez Trace Parkway over the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway at milepost 293.2 in Tishomingo County, where a road built to commemorate an old footpath crosses a barge canal finished in 1984. It is named for Jamie Whitten, who represented north Mississippi in the House of Representatives from 1941 to 1995, longer than any representative before him, and chaired the Appropriations Committee from 1979 to 1992. The Park Service marker at the crossing credits him with reviving the parkway project, securing continuous appropriations to build it, and leading the House in funding the waterway. The idea is far older than either.
Residents of Knox County, Tennessee, petitioned Congress to join the Tennessee and the Tombigbee in 1810, and the Army Corps of Engineers made its first survey in 1827. Congress approved the project in 1946 and construction began in 1972. Estimated in 1970 at $323 million, it cost almost $2 billion by its completion on 12 December 1984, after years of opposition from environmental groups, the railroad industry and members of Congress.
The waterway runs 234 miles to the Black Warrior-Tombigbee near Demopolis, Alabama, and the Park Service gives 307 million cubic yards as the earth moved to make it. About 1.8 km north of the bridge, the Jamie Whitten Lock, originally Bay Springs, lifts barges 84 feet into Bay Springs Lake; beyond the lake the Divide Cut, 29 miles long and up to 175 feet deep, took most of a decade to dig. The Corps forecast 27 million tons of cargo in the first year. Traffic peaked at about 8 million.
Getting there
34.5054, -88.3246
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