Skipping from the banks of the Ohio River, the GRR stays with US-51 southbound through small, thoroughly industrial Wickliffe (pop. 794), then takes an attractive 40-mile meander away from the rivers through wooded hill country, returning to the edge of the Mississippi at Hickman, a dozen miles from the Tennessee line.
West from Hickman, there’s a small ferry to Missouri, landing near the town of New Madrid (MAD-rid), where one of the strongest earthquakes ever struck on December 16, 1811. The Richter scale wasn’t around to measure it, but the quake was felt as far away as Boston.
