CENTENNIAL CUTOFF | Continuing southward along the western edge of Tipton and Shelby counties, you encounter a landscape shaped by a river constantly trying to find the shortest path. Over the years, the Mississippi River has repeatedly “straightened itself” by cutting through its own looping bends. These sudden shifts frequently slice off chunks of Tennessee territory, marooning them on the western side of the river. The most famous example of this phenomenon in Tipton County is the historic Centennial Cutoff.
The cutoff earned its memorable name because of the sheer speed at which it occurred. On March 7, 1876—the exact year the United States was celebrating its 100th anniversary—the mighty river violently forged a brand-new, direct channel right through a massive loop known as Devil’s Elbow. In a single day, the torrent of water abandoned its old, winding path, fundamentally altering the geography of the region overnight.
By taking this shortcut, the river bypassed the Devil’s Elbow bend entirely. As the old channel partially dried up, it left a newly created, isolated landmass in its wake. This landmass was officially designated Island 37 by the federal government.
Because the river had so suddenly jumped its banks, it triggered immediate jurisdictional chaos. Arkansas and Tennessee spent decades aggressively arguing over where the official state line actually lay. This legal vacuum turned Island 37 into a premier frontier sanctuary for bootleggers, gamblers, and outlaws, who gleefully exploited the confusion to evade law enforcement. The lawlessness famously boiled over on July 31, 1915, when a heavily armed Arkansas militia detachment launched a bloody raid on the island’s criminal syndicates, resulting in the death of an Arkansas sheriff and the subsequent lynching of outlaw ringleader Andy Crum.
To finally settle the bloody chaos, the border dispute was brought before the highest court in the land. In the landmark 1918 case State of Arkansas v. State of Tennessee, the U.S. Supreme Court relied on the legal principle of avulsion. The justices ruled that because the 1876 Centennial Cutoff was a sudden, violent geographic shift rather than gradual erosion, the original state boundary remained fixed along the center of the old, abandoned riverbed. This decision permanently secured Island 37 as the legal property of Tennessee.
Over the subsequent decades, the Mississippi River continued to migrate, eventually shifting completely to the eastern side of the old island. Today, the dramatic loop of Devil’s Elbow is long gone, and the land is physically welded to the Arkansas mainland. Yet, because of that single, explosive day in 1876 and the legal precedent it set, this quiet stretch of agricultural fields remains a proud enclave of Tipton County, Tennessee.