Wolf River (Tennessee)

The river serves to mitigate flooding and erosion, as habitat for wildlife, as a recreational area, as well as supplying clean water to an underground aquifer.

The Wolf River rises in the Holly Springs National Forest at Baker's Pond in Benton County, Mississippi, north of Ashland, and flows northwest into Tennessee, draining a large portion of Memphis and northern and eastern Shelby County, Tennessee, before entering the Mississippi River near the northern end of Mud Island, north of downtown Memphis.

The Wolf River area is home to deer, otter, mink, bobcat, fox, coyote, wild turkey, and a wide variety of waterfowl, reptiles, amphibians, and aquatic life.

A growing number of these species of plants and animals can be found in the urban reaches of the Wolf in Memphis, as the legacy of community action and the Clean Water Act slowly heals the degraded downstream section.

[4] In the early 19th century, the Wolf River was declared navigable, from Memphis to La Grange, by the Tennessee General Assembly, which appropriated funds to remove obstructions for keel boat travel.

Completion of channelization of the Wolf from the Mississippi upstream to Gray's Creek, east of Germantown, Tennessee, resulted in a lowered riverbed and diminished wetland habitat.

[5] In 1970, surface drainage, sewage, and industrial pollution caused a group of scientists and environmentalists to pronounce the river "dead" around Memphis.

To form any picture of [the river's environs] we must forget what we now see and imagine the Wolf as it was then, a clear, spring-fed stream slipping silently along through the endless forest, where the unbroken shade shielded it from the fierce Southern sunshine and kept it flowing fresh and cool all summer long ...

Gone now forever from this spot are the cane brake and the horses; the tall timber and the mysterious river, where hard by, on Austin Peay Bridge auto traffic streams triumphant, night and day in one unceasing roar, all oblivious of the life and history buried down below.

[6]In 1985, the Wolf River Conservancy was founded by an alliance of conservation-minded real estate executives and local environmental advocates, united in opposition to plans for additional channel dredging.

In 2005 the Wolf River Restoration Project was commenced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis Office to stop rapid erosion known as "headcutting" at Collierville, Tennessee.

The Wolf River's watershed is 889 square miles (2,300 km 2 ) in surface area, including parts of Shelby and Fayette counties in Tennessee and Benton County, Mississippi.
The Wolf River was designated an American Heritage River by presidential proclamation in 1997
Baker's Pond, the source of the Wolf River in Mississippi
The Wolf River's watershed (everything above the red dotted line), as surveyed in 1740 by Ignace Francois Broutin , chief engineer of French Louisiana . The French had named the Wolf "Riviere a Margot"
Wolf River Harbor, at Downtown Memphis, was formerly the lowermost channel of the Wolf River before its 1960 diversion by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The old mouth of the Wolf River is visible in the upper-right corner, framed by the I-40 and Mud Island Monorail bridges.
Bottomland hardwood swamp at the confluence of Tubby Creek and the Wolf River in the Holly Springs National Forest near Ashland, Mississippi . This location was considered to be the Wolf's head of navigation at the time of the first known full descent of the river, completed in 1998 by members of the Wolf River Conservancy who hiked or waded from the river's source at Baker's Pond to this point and traveled by canoe to the river's confluence with the Mississippi River . [ 7 ]