Elk River Shoals marked the easternmost point of a massive underwater formation in the Tennessee River that was exposed until the early 1900s and, together with Big Muscle Shoals and Little Muscle Shoals, formed the Muscle Shoals, a 37-mile stretch from Browns Ferry to Florence where a 137-foot vertical fall, waterfalls, rapids, sinks, sandbars, and islands made navigation almost impossible. To bypass this barrier, Alabama built a lateral canal with 17 locks on the river’s north side, opened in 1836 and abandoned in 1838, in part because it provided no way around Elk River Shoals south of the Elk River’s mouth. On October 9, 1863, General Joseph Wheeler crossed the Tennessee River at Elk River Shoals with about 4000 Confederate soldiers and headed south by an old Indian ford that ran diagonally across the shoals by way of two small islands and Gilchrist Island. While camped on the Richard Jones Plantation near Courtland, Wheeler met Daniella Jones, whom he married in 1866, and through that marriage became one of the largest postwar plantation owners in the Tennessee Valley. In 1875 the U.S. Corps of Engineers began a second canal, widening the original canal and reducing its 17 locks to nine, while adding a south-side canal across from the Elk River’s mouth with Lock A and Lock B to navigate around Elk River Shoals; this second Muscle Shoals Canal opened on November 10, 1890, and remained in use until construction of Wilson Dam began at Florence on November 8, 1918. When Wilson Dam was completed in 1925 and Wheeler Dam 15 miles east was completed in 1936, the rising water covered the shoals and canal locks, making this once-formidable section of the Tennessee River easily navigable, and later dams extended navigation from Paducah, KY, to Knoxville, TN, for 652 miles. Completion of Wheeler Dam also backed water into Elk River, forming a lake between Lauderdale and Limestone Counties and forcing replacement of the one-lane Elk River Bridge from about 1913; a two-lane bridge was built upstream in 1935, the older bridge was removed after the water rose in 1936, and in June 1994 a westbound two-lane bridge opened beside it, creating the modern four-lane Highway 72 crossing.