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Patoka River – Rock Bottom

We have all heard the expression “ We have hit rock bottom”. In the case of the Patoka River the area known as Rock Bottom is just downriver about ¼ of a mile from where the New River or Houchin’s Drain comes into the Patoka River . This area of the Patoka River has a true rock bottom. This is the only place in the river that I am aware of that has a rock bottom, the rest of the Patoka that I’m familiar with has mud for a bottom.

The rock bottom was used from early times as ford for the river. Bridges came in fairly recent history to the Patoka River, this is the name the native American Indians gave the river, most agree that Patoka meant “log on bottom” in the native Indian language. There were no bridges to cross the river for the Indians that lived in this area and there is a lot of evidence that the rock bottom area of the river was used by the early inhabitants to cross the Patoka River. On a rise not far from rock bottom remains of an Indian camp exist. In my childhood days it was easy to find arrowheads, grinding stones, bones and other evidence of an Indian camp, many of these have disappeared today from artifact collectors and the deterioration from farming,

When I first was old enough to explore this area some of it was “New Ground”, meaning not all of the stumps from the trees that once covered this area had been removed. My father and my uncles would till the soil around these stumps and every year more stumps were dynamited. My grandfather Kolb usually supervised the dynamiting of stumps and needless to say all of us boys were very excited to see the stumps blasted from the ground, The downside of blasting stumps was that the boys then had to do “ Chunk Lifting”, gathering the roots and smaller pieces and stacking them around the stump for burning at a later time. The “New Ground was always a fertile area for Indian artifacts.

The rock bottom area was an important crossing point in the river for Indians and the early settlers of this area. You could cross on foot by removing your shoes, if you had any, and cross the river with a minimal amount of mud., anywhere else a crossing would mean sinking in the mud and perhaps if you were carrying a load falling in the river.

The water at rock bottom was shallow and ran more swiftly than anywhere else in the Patoka River. This prompted some of the prognosticators to theorize that if the rock bottom portion of the river were dynamited and opened up, then the Patoka River would drain faster and less flooding would occur. I guess we will never know the answer to that question because a mud bar has developed over part of the rock bottom area.

The rock bottom area of the river played an important part of early people, wagons, and material. It was a fun area for all of us to play in our youth.

I have to speculate that the rock being at that depth may have accounted for the dredging of the New River connecting at differing depths. Uncle Chester Kolb said he seems to remember that the dredge boat coming from the west encountered rock and was limited in the depth the could dredge.