Mississippi

Of course rivers are the blood of Mississippi—when you share the name of the second longest river in the United States, as well as the river itself, you can’t help but be synonymous with rivers. Apart from the Mississippi, the other major rivers in Mississippi are the Pearl, Pascagoula, and Tombigbee, along with their main tributaries the Tallahatchie, Yazoo, Big Black, Leaf, and Chickasawhay rivers. All rivers in Mississippi eventually flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Pascagoula River, pictured above, is on the Nationwide Rivers Inventory as a potential wild and scenic river.

Mississippi has approximately 81,316 miles of river, of which 21 miles of one river, Black Creek, are designated as wild & scenic—less than 3/100ths of 1% of the state’s river miles. Mississippi does have a state scenic rivers system, though. Following passage of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968, Mississippi's first attempt at a streams bill was in 1969. After six failed attempts at a regulatory streams act, the project was abandoned in 1978. Twenty years later, there was a renewed effort to have a streams program in Mississippi, this time without regulation. The Mississippi Scenic Stream Stewardship Act was passed in 1999, and the Scenic Streams Stewardship Program began August 9, 1999.