Mud Island (Island Week 2)
Wednesday, 29th August 2007 by Alex Turnbull
(It’s Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.)
On the mighty Mississippi River, Memphis, Tennessee, is Mud Island, which is home to a steamboat museum, restaurants, an outdoor amphitheatre and some nice large type.
Okay, technically Mud Island isn't actually an island, but rather a small peninsula. However, it does contain a hydraulic scale model of the lower Mississippi recreated in miniature all the way from Cairo, Illinois south to New Orleans!
Which probably makes this the world's only model of a river on an island (that's actually a peninsula) in the river that the model is a model of...
Or something. 😉
Read more about Mud Island at Wikipedia. Thanks to dedHED and Nat Case.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Mud Island is Memphis!
Too cool! I love Mud Island. In fact, i was just there last week 🙂
I grew up in Memphis and used to go there all the time. I haven’t been in years, but have lots of memories of it. In fact, sometimes when looking at google maps/earth, I find parts of the river that I distinctly remember from the riverwalk. It’s the same overhead prospective and includes bridges and street maps of the larger cities along the way. Fun times.
I think this is the monorail shadow
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=35.149001,-90.056088&z=19
Featured in one of my favourite films “The Firm“
Little confused as to how this made it into Island Week. Don’t get me wrong, it is cool. However, it is not surrounded by water. If I’m not mistaken the post introducing Island Week said “small pieces of land that are surrounded completely by water”
Just thought I’d point that out. 🙂
@nova72 – lol, tell that to whoever named it!
TBH… I started writing the post before I realised it was actually a peninsula…
I promise the rest will be real islands!
tomorrow: Rhode Island!
Friday: Island Records HQ!
“Which probably makes this the world’s only model of a river on an island (that’s actually a peninsula) in the river that the model is a model of…”
That’s a pretty big claim there Alex.
In this building here at Penrith Lakes there is an hydraulic model of the river and lakes, and if Mud Island is on an island then this must be an island too (it is between the lake and the river)!
More interestingly though, this is the location for the Sydney 2000 Olympics Rowing and White-water sports. The artificial white-water course is to the north of the building but doesn’t have water in it at the time of the photo.
Penrith Lakes
White water stadium
Aaron – good one
Next week Rhode Island? All too fitting – as I am a Memphian transplant to the Ocean State! However, I do live on THE actual “island” of the state – Aquidneck Island…. that’s if we don’t count those blips on the map (Conanicut and Block Islands).
Yes it should be “Rhode Islands” but in fact the proper name is “Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations” (Aquidneck and Narragansett Indians weren’t exactly given their credit when statehood was coming around I assume, but now we know better). With that said, I propose to annex Providence into Massachusetts and rename Rhode Island to simply “Rhode Islands”, taking in Puerto Rico so they get their just-deserts as well! I’ve figured it all out! Eureka!