As Delta towns lose population, unique culture and history disappear with them

Joanne Moore moved out of her house in Corona, Tennessee more than a decade ago, due to lack of usable water and increased flooding. Others have left the area, too, and she worries the river community’s history will be lost with the population. (Photo: Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

CORONA, Tenn. — Life in the tiny community of Corona, a chunk of Tennessee on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River, has never been easy for Joanne Moore. Like many, she’s been forced to leave.

Her old home, once a grand mansion, is now falling apart. Weeds crawl up the bricks. The gutter has fallen off. A flood in 2021 left the house without running water. It has been the victim of three separate break-ins.

“It was, and still is, extremely distressing to me,” she said.

Moore raised her children there. Her daughter, Melissa Faber, called her childhood in Corona “magical.” Her family hunted and angled there, catching fish from Corona Lake which once fed into the river.

A combination of health issues and increased river flooding pushed Moore and her family off Corona—what Moore calls “the island”— in 2007. Without a well to get water from, Moore, 89, couldn’t return even if she wanted to. She worries about the culture and history of the island being lost as more and more people move away.

Moore is one of many who have faced tough choices as increased flooding and decreased economic opportunity have led to population loss in the Arkansas Delta, the region bordering the Mississippi River. Five counties in the Delta have seen their population decrease by more than 30 percent since 1990. Once a thriving agricultural community, Corona is a shell of its former self as the island’s unique ways of life are threatened.

Communities gained, communities lost

Corona is one of many river communities along state borders that are isolated from the rest of their respective states due to changes in the course of the Mississippi River over time. These communities are the result of the unique geography of the river, which for thousands of years shifted course and carved new paths.

The borders for southern states were drawn up in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, years before the river was leveed and fixed in place in the 1930s. As a result, some border towns are fixed in time, locked in by these old boundaries — slivers of Tennessee are surrounded by the state of Arkansas. Portions of Arkansas are surrounded by Mississippi.

Tennessee alone has 10 such border irregularities. Arkansas has 12. Mississippi has 13.

“There’s something magic about living on the river,”said Boyce Upholt, a journalist who just published a book about the Mississippi River called The Great River.

Corona’s population and water issues are a part of the larger trend of population loss across the Mississippi Delta. Michael Pakko, chief economist with the Arkansas Economic Development Institute who is currently running for state treasurer, said that the population loss began with the decline of the cotton industry during the Great Depression.

Mississippi County, the Arkansas county closest to Corona, had a population of 82,375 in 1950. In 2020, its population was just 40,000.

The story is the same for other counties across the Delta. Between 1990 and 2023, six Arkansas Delta counties lost population.

Phillips County, south of Memphis, along the border with Mississippi, lost nearly half of its population over the past three decades.

For Pakko, the biggest challenge for counties in the Delta is managing the “negative growth in a positive way.”  There is no definitive answer to how that is done, he said. He called the solution the “million dollar question.”

The popularization of remote work that was spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic may spark population growth in these regions, he said, but that is only speculation. For now, these areas remain in what Pakko called a “vicious cycle” of industry decline and population loss.

Moore doubts that people will come to places like Corona in the near future. She said the difficulties associated with living on the island—like water and first-responder issues—make it difficult for newcomers.

“If you don’t have a good reason to be there, you’re not going to live there,” she said.

A rich history lost

Originally founded in the 1830s, Corona was cut off from the rest of Tennessee following a flood in 1876. In 1950, Corona’s census district — which also includes a small portion of mainland Tennessee—had a population of 281. In 2022, Corona’s zip code — also covering a part of Arkansas — had a population of just 15.

Upholt said that communities along the river sprang up as centers of commerce that supported the booming trade along the Mississippi. Cities like Greenville became transportation and commercial hubs as the cotton trade grew.

That all changed with the expansion of railroads in the 1880s. Cities like Cleveland, Mississippi, further inland, saw rapid population growth. As transportation changed, river towns began to lose population.

“Few towns along the river are what they used to be. The business on the river isn’t what it used to be,” Upholt said.

With population loss, life in these river towns became more difficult. Even more so on the island of Corona, which is about a two hour drive from the rest of Tipton County, Tennessee.

Moore said that her family has received little help from the county due to the distance.

She recalled how in the 1950s, her husband and brother-in-law had to run seven miles of telephone lines themselves and purchase their own equipment to pave roads. When their children were old enough for school, they rented an apartment in Memphis so they could send them.

“We lived like people, in a lot of respects, 100 years ago,” she said.

Moore wasn’t born on Corona. She is from nearby Wilson, Arkansas and moved to Corona when she met her husband. The farm that she lived on had been in her husband’s family since 1836. Despite the difficulty, she stayed there because that is where her husband worked and lived, she said.

Moore, a historian who worked with the Tennessee Historical Commission for more than 30 years, particularly enjoyed the community that came with island living. Property owners on nearby Island 35 — another border island — would host yearly gatherings. People from the surrounding communities, she said, would take riverboats to the island and socialize into the early morning hours.

One of the largest challenges Moore and her family faced while living on Corona was water. During their time on the island, they built their own well to source groundwater, but it looked “like Orange Crush, almost” and wasn’t potable. They had to get bottled water.

This difficult, yet doable, existence on the island ended in 2007. Moore ended up moving back to Wilson. She’s lived there since, going back to visit her home around once a month, but without water and amenities, she can’t spend the night.

Moore has ruled out going back to Corona full-time due to health concerns. Her house flooded in 2011. She said a subsequent flood three years ago took out her well and water treatment system. Since then, the property hasn’t had running water.

She’s trying to get onto the water system of nearby Joiner, Arkansas. If that happened, she and her family could spend more time on the island and upkeep the decaying home.

According to Moore, this would cost thousands. She said she has been unable to get help from  Tipton County.

“Water would keep me from living here—if nothing else,” she said. “Nobody should have to go without any water.”

Compounding this issue is the landscape of Corona itself. In the 1800s, Mississippi and Tennessee began to construct a series of levees to prevent flooding along the river.

In 1927, Mississippi experienced its worst flood in recent history, what Upholt called a “waking up” moment for waterway engineers. This led to an expansion of the levee system to control the Mississippi.

Corona remained unprotected by those levees, on the banks of the river.

“It’s a huge commitment for someone to live there,” Upholt said.

Increased flood risk and the precariousness of living inside a levee leaves Moore worried. Forty-three percent of the homes in her zip code have a moderate flood risk of flooding within the next 30 years, according to climate data and analytics firm First Street.

Rainfall and flood risks are rising across southeastern states . Moore said that she cannot obtain flood insurance.

“It’s a very strange feeling to be sleeping at night knowing the river is coming up right underneath your head,” she said. “Every time the river comes up, it changes the landscape of the island.”

Fewer residents, more hunters

As people move out, duck hunters are moving in. For part of the year, that is.

Many of these border islands function as hunting clubs. One of these clubs is Beulah Island Hunting Club, located on the titular Beulah Island. The island, technically a piece of Arkansas, falls on the Mississippi-side of the border about 35 miles north of Greenville, Mississippi.

Before becoming a hunting club, Beulah Island was a lumber camp owned by the lumber companies Anderson Tully and Desha Land & Timber. The club began acquiring the land in 2008.

Henry Mosco, a Mississippi realtor who sells shares of Beulah Island, said the lightly developed nature of the island and the fact that it is inside the levee made it prime ground for a hunting club.

These hunting clubs can be lucrative sources of revenue, said Mosco. A recent listing shows one share of the roughly 2,863 acre island for $185,000. Owners, Mosco said, don’t live on the island. Instead, they build houses or cabins on the islands and live on them during hunting retreats.

“Your average person isn’t buying these memberships,” Mosco said.

This could be the future of Corona. Moore said that parts of Corona owned by other families have gone into a conservation program already, and will probably become hunting camps.

For Moore, the largest loss of places like Corona is cultural. During a recent break-in her father’s World War II medals and ribbons were stolen.

She worries that as these areas depopulate, the unique histories of these places will be forgotten.

“We’re losing a lot of history, a different type of history,” she said. “We’re losing a way of life.”

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk , an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America , with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.