About two miles south of French Camp, near milepost 179 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, the road crosses the line between two of Mississippi's major river basins, and does not cross back until the Jackson area. North of it, rain runs off by McCurtain Creek and the Bywy creeks of Choctaw County to the Big Black River, which begins in Webster County near Eupora and flows southwest about 300 miles to the Mississippi River, twenty-five miles below Vicksburg. South of it, water goes by the Yockanookany River to the Pearl, which reaches the Gulf of Mexico on its own.
The federal watershed boundaries put the parkway on the Big Black side from Jeff Busby to French Camp, except for a few hundred yards near milepost 184 that dip into the Yockanookany's watershed. The Big Black basin is the smaller of the two: about 3,384 square miles, some 155 miles long and on average 22 miles wide, by the state environmental agency's figures. The Pearl basin drains about 8,000 square miles of Mississippi and Louisiana, and the Mississippi Encyclopedia gives the river a course of 485 miles to the Gulf near the Rigolets.
Across Attala County the divide runs southwest, passing just west of Kosciusko, and the parkway stays on its eastern, Pearl side. A 1963 state survey found most of the dividing ridge built of sand, with the ground on the Big Black side about a hundred feet lower than comparable places in the Yockanookany basin. Sitting lower, the heads of the Big Black's tributaries collect most of the groundwater seeping from the hills between, and they were among the highest-yielding streams in the county. Hurricane Creek, crossed by the parkway at milepost 164.3, has the divide for its western valley wall.
Getting there
33.2692, -89.4157
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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