Get A Little Mud On Your Boots

About an hour’s drive from Waynesville, North Carolina, and you’ll be up to your ankles in mud, swatting mosquitoes and listening to cicadas hum from the willows and cottonwood trees of Rankin Bottoms Wildlife Management Area.

It’s the closest thing to a Louisiana backwater you’ll see in Western North Carolina or east Tennessee. 

It’s created artificially but the wildlife doesn’t seem to mind.

Rankin Bottoms is located at the confluence of the Nolichucky and French Broad Rivers at the eastern end of Douglas Lake just north of Newport, Tennessee, in Cocke County. 

The wildlife management area was recently expanded and encompasses nearly 2,000 acres. 

There are numerous opportunities for hunting and fishing at Rankin Bottoms but it has gained a lot of prominence recently as one of the National Audubon Society’s 27 Important Bird Areas in Tennessee.

The TVA dam on Douglas Lake creates Rankin Bottoms and the water level across the bottoms depends on the water level in Douglas Lake. 

In the summertime, water covers most of the area providing great paddling opportunities. 

Summertime is also a great time to see the hundreds of cliff swallows that nest under Rankin Bridge on the French Broad River at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources boat launch. 

Other nesting birds include barn swallows, tree swallows, willow flycatchers, wood ducks, ospreys, orchard and Baltimore orioles, eastern kingbirds, prothonotary warblers, red-headed woodpeckers and more.

Ranking Bottoms is in its avian glory during the shoulder seasons of spring and fall when migrating shorebirds drop in by the thousands. 

TVA begins to lower Douglas Lake around Labor Day and as the water recedes exposing mudflats, Rankin Bottoms becomes a hotspot for migrating shorebirds heading south. 

The water levels remain low in spring for the return trip. 

More than 89 species of waterbirds have been recorded at Rankin bottoms including greater and lesser yellowlegs, killdeer, least, semipalmated, western, pectoral, spotted, solitary, and stilt Sandpipers, short-billed dowitcher, semipalmated plover and more, rarer species include ruddy turnstone, American white pelican, American avocet and wood stork to name a few.

Rankin Bottoms is the perfect place to get a little mud on your boots.