March 4, 1918

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the boundary for Island 37, disputed territory that had been cut off from Tennessee by the Mississippi River and had for all practical purposes become a part of Arkansas, “should now be located according to the middle of that channel as it was at the time the current ceased to flow therein as a result of the avulsion of 1876,” leaving Island 37 in the hands of the State of Tennessee. While it was an early-twentieth-century outpost for bootleggers and other criminals, modern-day Island 37 is covered in cotton and soybean fields, with only a handful of small farm houses upon the land, though a few roads leading into Arkansas do service the area.