1939 Map of New Madrid

About this map

Sikeston Ridge dominates the northern half of this landscape, a prominent geological feature in a region defined by its relationship with the Mississippi River. The town of New Madrid sits at the northern apex of the famous New Madrid Bend, where the river makes a sharp horseshoe turn around Kentucky Point Bar and Watson Point. This area showcases the complex drainage engineering of the late 1930s, with a dense network of numbered canals like Main Ditch and Otter Slough Ditch cutting across the lowlands to manage the Little River watershed.