Dr. Mark Puckett, Chairman of the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Southern Mississippi, has studied the area for years.

Some sealife fossils that are now found worldwide, were first discovered in deposits along this river, from a period when it was part of the sea.

[4][5] The Chickasawhay is formed by the confluence of the Chunky River and Okatibbee Creek, where Enterprise developed in northwestern Clarke County, and it flows generally southward through present-day Clarke, Wayne and Greene counties into northern George County, where it joins the Leaf River to form the Pascagoula River just north of the Merrill bridge.

The Chickasawhay flows past the towns of Stonewall, Quitman, Shubuta, Waynesboro, Buckatunna, State Line and Leakesville.

Shubuta, like many other towns along the rivers, was developed by European Americans from a trading post near an indigenous Choctaw village.