The Yockanookany River is the valley the Natchez Trace Parkway follows south from Kosciusko. A tributary of the Pearl, it begins in Choctaw County northwest of Ackerman and runs southwest through the middle of Attala County into Leake County. Below Kosciusko the parkway stays within about a mile of it for long stretches, and the Park Service's paleontological inventory notes that the road was built immediately west of the river. Near milepost 153 the channel passes within about 600 yards of the road. At the federal stream gauge near Kosciusko, close to the parkway, it already drains 303 square miles.
A 1963 state survey described its alluvial plain as averaging about a mile wide and the river as having no prominent tributaries. It is fed by groundwater from four formations, the Wilcox, Tallahatta, Winona and Kosciusko, and its average annual low flow at Kosciusko was about 8 cubic feet per second, or about 5.2 million gallons a day, against about 60 cubic feet per second for the Big Black River at the county's southwest corner. The survey counted both rivers among the county's potential sources of surface-water supplies.
The bottoms hold some of the parkway's wettest forest. In a backswamp near Kosciusko the Park Service's vegetation survey sampled a stand whose understory was about 80 percent planertree, or water elm, under an open canopy of bald cypress, water tupelo, overcup oak and willow oak, on silty clay that stays flooded for long periods. Further south, a section of the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail carries the river's name.
Getting there
32.9408, -89.6065
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
