Big Bywy Ditch crosses the Natchez Trace Parkway at about milepost 196 in Choctaw County, three miles north of the Jeff Busby site. It is Big Bywy Creek, a branch of the Big Black River, and the name records what became of it. In 1943 the Mississippi State Geological Survey reported that Big Bywy, Middle Bywy, Besa Chitto and the Yokahockany had been canalized to speed the runoff, because their original channels had been choked by slope wash, especially from cultivated land in the bordering hills. The parkway drops about 55 feet from the ridge to the south to reach the creek.
The same report described how the larger streams of the county flow down the dip of the sand and clay beds and shift their channels southward over time, cutting into the south walls of their valleys while building up their floodplains on the north side. It named Big Bywy Creek among the streams where this shows, and said the process had made valleys of remarkable width in relation to their length. Those streams, it added, have low gradients except near their heads and flow sluggishly in wide bottoms.
On the state's 1998 geologic map of the Tomnolen quadrangle, west of the crossing, the creek's alluvium of sand and silt fills a broad flat between hills of Nanafalia clay, which carries lignite seams, capped by Tuscahoma sand.
Getting there
33.4484, -89.2323
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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