Muddy Boggy Creek

Muddy Boggy Creek, also known as the Muddy Boggy River,[2] is a 175-mile-long (282 km)[3] river in south central Oklahoma. The stream headwaters arise just east of Ada in Pontotoc County.[2][4] It is a major tributary of the Red River in south central Oklahoma. Clear Boggy Creek is a major tributary which enters the Muddy Boggy at a location known as River Mile 24[lower-alpha 1] in Choctaw County. The river is inhabited by over one hundred species of fish.[5]

Muddy Boggy Creek
Muddy Boggy River
Location
CountryUnited States of America
StateOklahoma
Physical characteristics
Source 
 • coordinates34°46′56″N 96°37′30″W
 • elevation300 m (980 ft)
Mouth 
 • coordinates
33°56′16″N 95°36′40″W
 • elevation
120 m (390 ft)
Length175 km (109 mi)
Discharge 
 • locationUnger
 • average2,002 cu ft/s (56.7 m3/s)[1]
Basin features
River systemRed River of the South

Geography

Muddy Boggy Creek is located in the counties of Pontotoc, Hughes, Coal, Atoka, and Choctaw.

It begins on the eastern edge of Ada, and comes within 3 miles (5 km) of the Canadian River before turning southeast and passing through the Arkoma Basin and the western edge of the Ouachita Mountains. It is located in an area once known as the Cross Timbers.[5] It joins the Red River at a point southwest of Hugo, just a few miles upriver from where Highway 271 crosses the Red River at the unincorporated town of Arthur City, Texas.

Lake Atoka is the only lake on the river.[5] It is 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of the City of Atoka.[5]

Tributaries

Tributaries of Muddy Boggy Creek include Sand, Caney Boggy, Rock, East Fork, Coal, Caney (Coon), North Boggy, McGee, Cold Spring, Lick and Crowder creeks. Major tributaries of Clear Boggy Creek are Jackfork, Coal, Goose, Leader, Delaware, Sandy, Caney, Fronterhouse, Cowpen, Bois d'Arc and Mayhew creeks. According to Pigg, all of the tributaries in the headwaters are short and deep, while those in the lower elevations are short, shallow and filled with dead timber.[5]

Topography

Near the source, the Muddy Boggy passes through the Arbuckle Mountains, and has a gradient of about 100 feet per mile (19 m/km). By the time it flows through the Cretaceous area, the gradient is only 5 feet per mile (0.95 m/km). It then flows through the Ouachita Mountains.[5]

Clear Boggy Creek has a gradient of about 15 feet per mile (2.8 m/km) near its source and 1.5 feet per mile (0.28 m/km) near its mouth.[5]

Watershed

The river basin is about 80 miles (130 km) long by 40 miles (64 km) wide.[3] The drainage area is 2,429 square miles (6,290 km2), and includes parts of Coal, Pontotoc, Hughes, Pittsburg, Atoka, Johnson, Bryan, Pushmataha, and Choctaw counties.[5]

History

Name origin

Muriel H. Wright wrote that Doctor Jonathan Sibley had reported in 1805, that this stream had been called Vazzures by French explorers. She said this was a corruption of the French word vaseaux, which meant boggy or "miry", because of the deep mud or mire in the channel bottom. Later, English-speaking traders named the stream, using the English translation.[6]

Historical significance

Muddy Boggy Creek was in territorial days considered a particularly defining characteristic, as there were no bridges and the waterway's sandy banks made it difficult to ford. The Pushmataha District, one of three administrative super-regions comprising the Choctaw Nation in the Indian Territory, used it or its tributaries to form boundaries between Atoka County, Jack's Fork County, Jackson County and Kiamitia County. The District's administrative and judicial capital, Mayhew, was said to be positioned "between the forks of the Boggies," a frequent early-day reference to the lower reaches of the river in the plural form.[7]

Notes
  1. River mile designates the distance from the mouth of the river.
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References
  1. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ok/nwis/annual/?format=sites_selection_links&search_site_no=07335300&agency_cd=USGS&referred_module=sw
  2. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Muddy Boggy Creek
  3. U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-04-05 at WebCite, accessed June 3, 2011
  4. Ada, Oklahoma and Francis, Oklahoma, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangles, USGS, 1958
  5. Pigg, Jimmie. "A Survey of the Fishes of the Muddy Boggy River in South Central Oklahoma" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 24, 2010. Retrieved October 3, 2009. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. Wright, Muriel H. "Some Geographic Names of French Origin in Oklahoma." Chronicles of Oklahoma. Volume 7, Number 2, pp. 188-193. Archived 2017-02-02 at the Wayback Machine Accessed March 5, 2016.
  7. Interview with Cass Vandergriff. Indian-Pioneer Papers. Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.
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