doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT:My river-35 million years down the Chickasawhay

I have already passed this along to Stan Hillis in an email, but thought you guys would enjoy this. The Chickasawhay River runs right by my hometown and is a part of my life, also running about a mile along our property South of town. Many memories from childhood until now on this body of water. Enjoy.
JR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9TgwYEt6eI

Thank you JR for linking that beautiful story of your Chickasawhay River. It reminded me so much my Alapaha/Withlacoochee/Suwannee River system. Clearly the same geologic history going on. I recognized the "rock dollar" at the beginning of the show because I have picked up hundreds of the same things around here...Geo

Interesting cruise through the epochs. Not far from Stan on the Savannah River banks there are fossilized oyster shells that are a foot or more in length. Gil

Really good film - geology is a unfulfilled hobby of mine and twin brother who has spent his life as a petroleum engineer, for a long time in charge of Mobile oil Mobile Bay project knows the geology of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama well.

I spent a lot time in my youth in the 1950's around the rivers of North Florida Withlacoochee, Oklawaha, Ichetucknee, Suwannee (which runs into the Gulf in an enormous sparsely habited swamp woods) and in that beautiful limestone bluegrass central rib of Florida that stretches from the Okefenokee to Orlando. The springs that fed the creeks in that Oolitic Limestone area were ice cold. And out on the lakes towards the east of Gainesville and the Saint Johns that we called "the Big Scrub" where it was rumored there were some of the last of the Florida panthers. Florida was a different place then - Alachua County was the second largest cattle producing county in the country. Limestone as the video said is deep-water rock. We hunted fossilized sharks teeth in the creeks.

John I enjoyed ! Bobby

�A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure �
Justice Oliver Windell Holmes
New Jersey vs New York 283 U. S 336 (1931)

John, I got in from the fields, had supper with Queen, and have now enjoyed the video treat. What a treasure is that river! You are surrounded by eons of historical evidences.

I grew up on and around a river, too, the Savannah. It is a much larger river, and contains much prehistorical remains, as Gil noted, but not in the amount of the Chickasawhay. The video is so well done, too. Thanks for sharing it with me, and the board frequenters.

As a lad I walked the fields that bordered the Savannah River swamp and collected native American artifacts. I have accumulated quite a collection over the decades God has blessed me with here, and continue to find one from time to time. I looked hard this afternoon, in several fields I was preparing for peanut planting, for "arrowheads" or other artifacts, but no luck. I once found a petrified sand dollar as I squatted by a newly constructed reservoir of about 10 acres here, hoping to kill a duck or two, as a young man. That stuff kind of puts a man in his place, if you know what I mean.

All my best, SRH

Worth mentioning: in the Fall, late October/early November, as the weather improves and rains are less, the Chickasawhay gets low and the water clears up and becomes a much clearer green. It's really beautiful then, and the Kentucky spotted bass are in rare form.
JR

Watching the video my first thought about the ocean levels going up and down such extreme amounts had to be global warming. But why I thought? Could not be dinosaurs and their mega size suvs, they were long extinct by then. Can�t be man caused we were not evolved yet and our line was still up in the trees. So has to be Sun activity, natural events like volcanoes or Earth rotation changes.

Life has endured for tens of millions of years. Life forms come, dominate and then fade. The Earth changes but always wins in the end. So global climate change is as natural as the sunrise and just about as pointless to try to fix. You can�t fix time.

Thanks John I'll watch this tonight. My dad was from Hiwannee and my grandad owned land that bordered the Chick. Spent many days in my youth following Paw as he plowed the fields. He once caught a 100 lb sturgeon in a fish net he had in the river. Sadly they're all gone now.

Old times there are not forgotten.