Tunica County High Point Trip Report
Date: May 23, 2001
Author: Fred Dale
I had wanted this Delta county for some time due to its rare single-point status, especially since it connects
to singletons on the other side of the Mississippi. Skunked on the first day I tried it by fading light and
changed road conditions, I overcame frustration the next morning. As is often the case, by the time I got the
cohp I knew the area well enough to be able to repeat the ascent from several locations. I'll describe my
route, which gives a hiker the most vertical gain -- a mighty 110 feet!
On Blues Highway 61 south of Memphis, proceed east 2.5 mi. on MS Hwy. 304. Turn S onto Hwy. 3. Go
about 1.7 to Counce Rd. and turn east. The E edge of the Delta abruptly rises 2 mi. ahead. An unposted
gated dirt lane goes south. A bicycle track south along the foot of the bluffs fades out just past a farm work
center (the gigantic farm fields extend west toward Indochina). Unfortunately, a diminutive bayou snakes up
close to the bluffs here, and while creating a beautiful tableau of fresh cypress green against the oaks of the
hills, gives grief to the knobs of a mountain bike in the soft Mississippi Delta mud. Two crossings, the first
by semi-improved farm road (with culvert), the second a bushwhack of sorts across a fence and 6-ft. wide
watercourse, allowed continued southward progress onto drier land, still at the bluff butt.
Here, about a mile S of Counce Rd., I arrived at another apparent work site characterized by at least one
piece of large abandoned farm equipment. On the topo, a house/bldg. is shown here; it no longer exists.
This was the same place at which I'd been turned back by darkness the night before, on an approach along
the bluff base from the south. If you've read to here, heed this: use the south approach, from Pratt Rd. (DeSoto county name),
which parallels Counce and intersects MS Hwy. 3 just a couple of mi. S of Counce as Arkabutla Dam Road (Tunica county name). Similar to Counce's
access, an unposted gated lane starts at the base of the bluffs on Pratt and heads N. The work site is roughly
a mile north, access much easier than from the north.
Hike uphill steeply east. The poison ivy was literally chest high initially, but once in the real woods, going
was fairly easy. The topo-mapped but so-far-unfound unimproved track that ascends the bluff was
intersected shortly, and gave me a needed landmark. Examine the topo: the road reaches a gap of sorts.
It fades, but the peaks in the area correspond to the topo quad, and the cohp-hill was found without
much searching.
Before the hike I noted the GPS-longitude of the county line sign on Miss. Hwy. 304. Once at the apex of
the cohp hill, I walked a grid in the area, getting both the summit and a ridge-line descent W and E to be
sure I got this liner of a cohp. Actually, a decrepit N-S fence-line was found at the said longitude (noted to
hundredth of a minute) and may mark the county line there at the summit. And it was there at the summit of
the hill, a few steps away from the fence, that I determined the cohp to be. I visited other nearby hilltops to
be sure of bagging the county, but everything else seemed to be east of my county line longitude and would
not match the topo. Fairly thick woods, mixed with younger woods, probably fields 35 years ago.
A deer-hunting stand in an oak at the hp. Can't say how easy getting there from the east would be.
Highpoint GPS coordinates: (34 deg 47.32' N, 90 deg 12.13' W)
Topo chart, midway between Pratt Road and highpoint