Wedding of the Waters

Wedding of the Waters is a Tennessee historical marker in Shelby County.

Shelby Co, Memphis, northeast corner of Confederate Park, at intersection of Riverside Dr. & Jefferson Ave.

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A great celebration marking completion of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad occurred near here on May 1-4, 1858. These festivities attracted 25,000 spectators and included a symbolic "wedding of the waters" at the Court Street Wharf, with firemen from cities along the Memphis & Charleston route pumping Atlantic Ocean water, drawn from Charleston Bay, into the Mississippi River. One contemporary account hailed the celebration as "the greatest demonstration of popular joy" ever witnessed in the Mississippi Valley. Numerous Memphians, including Col. John T. Trezevant, Robert C. Brinkley, and W. B. Greenlaw, were important investors in and promoters of this railroad, which was highly successful.

TodayHistorical map

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

Historical maps covering this location

1835 · Chickasaw Cession, Mississippi (1835) (Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1848 · United States. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1855 · Arkansas (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1859 · Arkansas (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1862 · Johnson's Kentucky & Tennessee (1862) (Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

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Marker text and location from the Tennessee Historical Commission, as the Commission publishes them on its marker map.

Wedding of the Waters

Historical maps covering this location

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