Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway 200 years in the making

The first known recommendation to build a water transportation route connecting the Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers was made by a French explorer, the Marquis de Montcalm, to Louis XV of France between 1760 and 1770.

At that time, rivers were the only practical means of transporting supplies and commerce from the coastal settlements to the hinterlands.

In 1810, the citizens of Knox County, Tenn., (current location of Knoxville) petitioned the U.S. Congress to build the waterway that would shorten the distance by more than 800 miles for trade with New Orleans, Mobile and other ports along the Gulf of Mexico.

The first engineering investigation of the waterway was conducted during the Grant Administration in 1874-75. The study concluded that the U.S. Corps of Engineers could build such a project that included a total of 43 locks and a channel four feet deep; but its commercial limitations made it impractical.

The Corps conducted other studies in 1923, 1935, 1938 and 1945 that eventually led to congressional approval of the waterway in 1946.

The development of the Tennessee River by TVA, especially the construction of the Pickwick Lock and Dam in 1938, help decrease Tenn-Tom’s costs and increase its benefits.

The successful completion of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway had to overcome many hurdles and pitfalls during its long history. Even after construction was well underway, a small but well organized group of opponents exhausted all legal recourses in the federal courts as well as aggressively lobbying the Congress to stop the project. In some cases, they nearly succeeded.

After 12 years of construction at a total cost of nearly $2 billion, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was completed on Dec. 12, 1984. The last plug of earth was removed from the waterway channel at Amory, Miss., allowing the long-awaited mixing of the waters of the Tombigbee with that of the Tennessee River.

The Tenn-Tom officially opened to commerce on Jan. 10, 1985 when the Towboat, Eddie Waxler, transporting nearly 2.7 million gallons of petroleum products, made its maiden voyage on the waterway.