Summer at the lake: families flock to Pickwick for water sports, relaxation, reconnecting.

Tucked in the northeast corner of Mississippi lies a treasure you wouldn't expect to find in this land of muddy bogs and flood-control reservoirs.

This is Pickwick Lake, home to rocky bluffs, towering hardwoods, and deep, sparkling waters that rise and fall a mere five feet as the seasons pass. It's here that families from three states have made their retreat for generations. And it's here that, today, urban pressures and lakeside dreams are helping to uncover this well-kept secret.

"This was always our retreat place," says Dave Woods, a native of Jackson, Tennessee, who has been coming to Pickwick Lake since the late 1970s. He bought the 325-slit Grand Harbor Marina resort on the lake's Mississippi side about a year ago. "We had to find a way to stay here," he says.

The booming real-estate market and a blossoming restaurant business are among the signs of the area's recent growth, says Woods, who also owns Freddy T's restaurant and Pier 57 boat sales and service in the Pickwick area. Local real-estate agents have marked the trend, too, as cozy cabins have been joined by mansions.

Though the area has long been a weekend playground for Memphis, Tennessee, the city's eastward growth and recent improvements on U.S. highways 64, 72 and 45 are bringing the city even "closer" with a little over an hour commute.

"If there's anything we still lack," says Pare Pickard, broker-owner at Pickwick Lake Properties, "it's shopping." That's no deficit, though, to the thousands of visitors who come simply to enjoy the water--both for weekends and, increasingly, on a full-time basis.

"There is hardly a week that goes by that we don't have a couple wanting to get out of the city," Pickard says. "They dream of being by the lake, and they want to get out of town. They want Memphis to be where they go on the weekends." But Pickwick isn't just a retirement spot, working families are also able to spend more time at the lakeside by telecommuting to their jobs in the city, Pickard says.

Memphis capital-markets executive Tyler Shawkey and his wife, Jackie, started coming to Pickwick in the late 1980s to rent a cabin or stay at Tennessee's Pickwick Landing State Park. They began looking for property of their own when they had children, and today they head to Pickwick nearly every weekend with 13-year-old Jack and 9-year-old Olivia.

"We love it there," Shawkey says of their weekend home, situated steps from the lake on the Mississippi side in the Yellow Creek area. "It's really been a great investment for our family. When we come down the driveway on Friday evening, I can just feel my blood pressure going right down."

At Pickwick, their children have grown into wakeboarding enthusiasts, preferring the smooth waters of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway channel to practice their sport.

"My son thinks they made it for wakeboarding," Shawkey says. "It's like a perfect water-ski run or wakeboard run, even if it's busy. You can have a lot of boats in there, but as the water hits the riprap it stays really smooth."

Mike and Sally Featherstone also wanted to be near the water. They bought their condominium at Grand Harbor Marina when Mike retired as a professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law. While keeping their home in Oxford, they have spent most of their time on the lake since they bought the place five years ago. It inspires memories of their childhoods in North Carolina. "He always said when he retired he was going to be on a river, so that's what we did," his wife says.

For the Featherstones, the only quirk of Pickwick, which straddles three states, is that their condominium has a Counce, Tennessee mailing address and a Mississippi area code. But their six grandchildren, who live in Hernando and Germantown, Tennessee, don't mind. They love visiting the family retreat to fish, ride on the jet ski and pontoon boat, and enjoy the resort's swimming pool and tennis courts.

According to the Featherstones, a chief advantage of Pickwick over other Mississippi lakes is its navigability along the Tennessee River and the Tenn-Tom Waterway. They've taken their pontoon boat southeast on the Tennessee as far as Florence, Alabama, and into Bear Creek on the Mississippi-Alabama line.

"We like to go in the boat to a restaurant and tie up and eat," she says.

Winding a 53-mile-long course from Pickwick Landing Dam in Tennessee to Wilson Dam in Alabama, Pickwick boasts nearly 490 miles of shoreline and more than 43,000 acres of water surface. At its summer high, it stands at 414 feet above sea level.

Pickwick Landing Dam, built in 1934-38, is a significant producer of hydroelectric power for the Tennessee Valley Authority. As a byproduct, the dam system has helped create some excellent sport-fishing areas, according to the TVA.

The Wilson Darn tailwater at the upper end of the reservoir is noted for record-size smallmouth bass and catfish. The discharge basin at Colbert Fossil Plant west of Sheffield, Alabama, is a favorite cold-water fishing spot, as fish are attracted to warm water discharged from the power plant.

"There is a fish here for every month of the year," says Roger Stegall of Iuka, a professional fishing guide in the Pickwick area for the past 20 years. "This is not the easiest lake in the world to fish because its deep waters reveal few logs and stumps as easy casting targets."

But its challenges have attracted fishermen from across the country to join Stegall and the four fellow guides he employs. "I've carried people from just about every state in the union," he says.

Jack Pettigrew, a Brownsville, Tennessee, physician, who has been coming to Pickwick since 1959, when his father bought a little aluminum fishing boat, believes that over the years all the attention has in some ways changed the nature of the place. "I learned to ski behind that boat, and we just fell in love with the place," says Pettigrew, recalling how his father used to close up shop on Wednesday afternoons and head for the lake.

The father and son together bought a lake house in a cove on Yellow Creek in 1986. Pettigrew's grown sons, now ages 26 and 30, grew up on the lake, as have his younger children with wife Glenda, an 8-year-old daughter and twin 6-year-old sons. "As young as they are, they just love to swim off the dock," he says.

Pettigrew's parents, now in their 80s, still enjoy going to the lake and typically take friends for several days at a time. His brothers in Brownsville and Huntsville, Alabama, take advantage of the place, too, as do a group of buddies who have joined him at the lake for "Boys' Day Out" annually for the past 19 years. "We are all nearly 20 years older now, but we still meet up one weekend in July," he says.

Among their traditions is taking the pontoon boat over to "the waterfall," a Pickwick landmark where boats converge for sandbar sunning, cliff jumping, and people watching. Other favorite areas include an old chalk mine in a cove in the Bear Creek area and the tiny island where Bear Creek meets the main Tennessee River channel.

For those just discovering Pickwick, private cabin and condo rentals are available for a weekend or longer. Campgrounds are located at Tennessee's Pickwick Landing State Park, as is the Pickwick Resort Inn with an exercise room, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts, a pair of fishing piers, and a public swimming beach. Mississippi's J.P. Coleman State Park also offers cabin rentals and motel rooms. Lakeside marinas offer fishing boats, pontoon boats, houseboats, and jet skis for rent. There are also three golf courses in the area. Fishing tournaments and the Pickwick Challenge speedboat races in May are among special events that many enjoy.

IF YOU GO:

Pickwick Landing State Park

Park Road, Pickwick Dam, TN

800/250-8615

www.tnstateparks.com/pickwicklanding

J.P. Coleman State Park

613 County Road 321, Iuka

662/423-6515

www.mdwfp.com

Aqua Yacht Harbor

3832 Highway 25, Iuka

6621423-2222

www.aquayachtharbor.com

Grand Harbor Marina

325 County Road 380, Counce, TN

662/667-5551

www.gograndharbor.com

Mill Creek Marina

Iuka

662/424-0475

www.millcreekmarina.org

Pickwick Boat Rentals

7380 Highway 57, Counce, TN

731/689-5359

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF WATSON