09/24/2026
Owens Island is a unique land feature in the river adjacent to downtown Paducah. It marks the spot where the Tennessee River flows into the Ohio. It also provides a haven, of sorts, for our city's river industry.
Below is a brief history of the island along with a firsthand account from someone who once lived there.
THE HISTORY OF OWENS ISLAND
J.T. Crawford
"Islands in the stream; that is what we are…: The 1983 Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton hit speaks of romance between two lone souls, insulated from the world and floating like islands in a river of love. Well, that’s what it could mean, I guess.
The truth is that river islands are oft isolated, lonely, and uninhabited. There are a few notable exceptions, however, such as Manhattan, Montreal, and the 7,000-square-mile Bananal Island in Brazil. But up and down the rivers of our nation are hundreds of plots of land cut off from the rest of civilization by the swift-moving currents of the American waterways.
The most notable in our area is Owens Island located just southeast of the foot of Broadway in downtown Paducah. Even though Owens Island lies just off the city of Paducah, and is a focal point of the scenery at the foot of Broadway, the island has never been a part of the city and to this day remains a county property. At roughly a mile and a half long, the 300-acre, tree-covered island is used mainly as a mooring for river barges. During its lifetime, however, it hosted Continental Army troops, Native Americans driven from their homeland, and farmers who used the land for crops as well as a place to call home.
For most of its life, the large island was known as the Tennessee Island. An 1889 map curiously named it Davidson’s Island although maps before and after that date used the name Tennessee. While there are two islands (Owens Island and Cuba Towhead) at the congruence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, maps prior to the 1930s shows three islands. They often do not agree on the position of the third, however. Some show the third, smaller island just to the northeast of Tennessee Island with the name Owens Island. More than likely, the third island has since washed away, leaving the two we know today.
The larger Tennessee Island is mentioned in early American history. In 1778, General George Rogers Clark and about 200 followers camped on the island to regroup and prepare for a campaign against the British in Illinois. Upon leaving Tennessee Island, the group crossed the river near Fort Massac and took Kaskaskia, Illinois from the British on July the 4th.
Just a year later, John Donelson, Colonial frontiersman and co-founder of Nashville, TN, led settlers into the region along the Tennessee River. Approximately thirty families in addition to slaves and household goods came to the mouth of the river at Tennessee Island on a flotilla of canoes, flat boats, and dugouts on Wednesday, March 15, 1780. They docked on the island, wondering if their journey should continue. Some had died or gone missing along the way as a result of extreme cold, attacks from Native Americans, starvation, and small pox. Due to torrential rains, the Ohio River level was high, and the waters moved rapidly.
Donelson’s journal entry the day he landed on the island was less than hopeful:
Our situation here is truly disagreeable. The river is very high and the current rapid. Our boats not constructed for the purpose of stemming a rapid stream. Our provision exhausted. The crew’s almost worn down with hunger and fatigue. And know not what distance we have to go or what time it will take us to our place of destination. The scene is rendered still more melancholy; as several boats will not attempt to ascend the rapid current. Some intend to descend the Mississippi to Natchez: others are bound for the Illinois. Amongst the rest my son-in-law & daughter. We now part, perhaps to meet no more, for I am determined to pursue my course, happen what will.
Fifty years later, the rivers of the Southeast became vital routes for the mass deportation of Native Americans from their homelands following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In 1835, a group of Muscogees from Alabama traveled down the Tennessee under the command of William Beattie. On the night of December 28th, the group of 511 people spent the night on Tennessee Island. Disbursing agent Lieutenant Edward Deas wrote in his journal:
The Boats arrived near Paduca[sic] at the mouth of the Tennessee River this morning at 9 o'clock, and the greater part of the Indians were landed on an Island in the vicinity of the town. During the day the Contractors have been engaged in procuring provisions, and the Captain of the S. Boat in making preparations to proceed. It being nearly dark before these were completed, we have decided not to move the Indians from their camps until tomorrow morning. The Steam Boat has been brought over to the Island, the keels lashed and everything in readiness to make an early start.
The boats left at daylight the next morning. Many more Native Americans would later pass by the port of Paducah as they came down the Tennessee River. Paducah was often a stopping point to replenish supplies before entering the Ohio River and moving on west. Often, the boats containing Native Americans were anchored off the mainland in order to prevent them from coming ashore. The crucial juncture of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers at Tennessee Island helped seal its place forever along the Trail of Tears.
About the same time, Virginian Valentine Owen migrated to Paducah and bought large parcels of river bottomland in McCracken County and Southern Illinois. There, he planted corn and grains and raised hogs, cattle, and mules. To bridge operations on both sides of the river, Owens constructed a ferryboat. In addition to using it for his farming ventures, Owens opened it up as a business to convey passengers between the two states.
Captain Owen also purchased the Tennessee Island along with its two neighboring towhead islands and used them for farmland. Jesse Gardner, Paducah’s first mayor, procured his first job in Paducah at the age of 22 when Owen hired him to clear trees off the main island in 1839. Most historical maps show the main island retaining the name Tennessee while the now smaller, extinct island to the northeast was called Owens Island.
Shortly after the Civil War, the War Department commissioned the Army Corps of Engineers to research the feasibility of closing the gap between the point of Livingston County and Tennessee Island in order to make it a more friendly harbor in the winter months. The plan would have turned the island into a peninsula. Paducahans greatly protested, however, stating that traffic from the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers would have to land downstream of the city and then be towed back to Paducah. The gap between Livingston and Tennessee Island was the main point of entry for vessels traveling from the east. The protest of Paducah in addition to the huge cost of such a project caused the Army Corps to recommend the closing of the point be scrapped.
For about the next hundred years, sharecroppers farmed the island under the direction of the Owen family. Most lived on the island while they farmed; others simply commuted by boats. Eventually, however, farming ceased, and the island returned to the way it looked when explorers first discovered it on their treks west.
We know of tales of triumph and tales of woe to which the island could attest. Surely there are countless unknown stories that will forever remain silent: stories of Native Americans in a land untouched; stories of settlers and their treks of hardship and success; stories of struggles for independence and struggles to keep our nation one; stories of yielding up its own strength to grow crops and provide life. All have gone rushing by in time just like the currents of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. An island in the stream; that is what it is.
LIFE ON OWENS ISLAND
J.T. Crawford
There is nothing quite like island life. The afternoon sun burns bright as you dip your toes in the waves lapping the shore. A vessel passes gently by as the children run out to wave at the captain and crew. Live is simpler; life is easier. For many years, the island life was a reality just off the coast of Paducah. The scene was more akin to something from a Mark Twain novel, however, than that found in a travel magazine.
Ted Brian’s first memory of living on Owen’s Island was a traumatic one. “I don’t recall any memories before the ’37 flood,” he says. “I was very small, and I remember the Corps of Engineers put us on a boat and took us up to Reidland to a refugee camp.”
Ted’s grandfather and nine children had moved to the island in 1923. “He was a sharecropper in Pope County, IL. Annie Owen owned the island then, and she wanted him to come and farm it. In exchange, they were allowed to live there. My dad worked and farmed the land as well. There were over 200 acres of good farmland. He never used fertilizer because the ground would flood every year, leaving good stuff behind.”
Even though the family was forced to leave during the ’37 flood, high water was usually not a deterrent to living on Owen’s Island. “There was one house built on the island,” recalls Ted. “It was my grandparents’. We called it the big house. It was built on piers. My family lived in a two-room shanty boat on the head of the island. It was built on logs and barrels so that it would float in high water. Most of the time it sat on the ground. There were two 12x12 rooms. My older brother George and I slept in the kitchen and mom and dad in the living room. If you look back, it seems like it was a poor existence. But it really wasn’t. We always had plenty of food, and we canned for the winter. Granddad raised hogs, so meat was plentiful. I really can’t eat ham, even to this day. We had so much as kids!”
Ted’s grandmother even had a side job taking care of the lighthouse on the point of the island. “She kept it clean and made sure it was always lit. It wasn’t electric like the one they have now. She had to keep it full of kerosene.”
Ted’s memories of living on the island are happy ones. “We swam all the time. We explored and watched everything that came down the river. We got into trouble, too. I was the good kid. My brother George, not so much. One of the first times I remember us getting in trouble was when we messed with our old milk cow. George knew how to milk, so we’d take some old s***f cans, and he’d milk the cow into them, and we’d sit and drink milk and give it to the cats. Dad was getting frustrated cause the cow wasn’t giving good milk anymore. Mom finally caught us. Needless to say they didn’t like it so much.”
There was also plenty of mischief toward island visitors. “Fisherman from Paducah would come over in boats and fish around the island. We’d go out to the little bluff, and all George wanted to do was talk to them. They wanted quiet, thinking we’d scare all the fish off. One guy made George so mad that he picked up a big ol’ rock and threw it straight down through the bottom of that guy’s boat. It sank immediately. We both ran and hid under our house. Dad ended up fixing the guy’s boat and sent him on his way. Then he fixed the two of us! I don’t know if there was anything George wouldn’t do.”
In 1941, Ted’s parents moved off the island to Paducah. Ted spent most of his time on the island, staying with his grandparents. “I rowed across the river every day. I parked my boat at Shell Oil Company, hid my oars, went up the hill to see my aunt, and then off to school. Rowing across was always calculated. You moved forward, but you moved with the current, too. So depending on the time of year and the current, you had to really figure it out before you took off so you’d hit shore in the right place. The biggest fear was being sucked under the edge of a barge.”
It was dangers such as the big barges that ended Ted’s days of crossing back and forth. “My grandfather and I had gone over to Paducah. On the way back, we got close to a barge. It was so close his head actually raked against it. Well, grandmother was watching all this from the island. That night at supper, she said, ‘That boy’s not crossing that river anymore.’ I guess I was about nine at the time. I could row that river at nine, but I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was thirteen!”
The island stayed under control of the Owen family and Ted’s family farmed it for many more years. Ted went on to graduate from Tilghman, then he joined the marines. “I went into the ceremonial guard at Washington D.C. I stood guard at Camp David. That just goes to show you that there are opportunities. Only in America could someone go from living on an island at Paducah to guarding the president!”
Ted looks back with fondness on his island life. He remembers ill-fated attempts at making sorghum molasses during World War II because of the sugar shortage and ultimately selling it to moonshiners because it was not fit to eat. He remembers his grandfather raising foxhounds and shipping them to England and Scotland where he’d become a well-respected foxhunter. He remembers cold winters when the river froze and people drove cars across the ice to the island.
“I never regret where I was raised,” adds Ted. “We didn’t know what poor was, even through the depression. We ate well and had lots of fun. It was a great life.”
