Joanne Moore moved out of her house in Corona, Tennessee, more than a decade ago due to lack of usable water and increased flooding. Others have left the area, too, and she worries the river community’s history will be lost with the population. (Lucas Dufalla/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
CORONA, Tenn. — Life in the tiny community of Corona, a chunk of Tennessee on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River, has never been easy for Joanne Moore. Like many, she’s been forced to leave.
Her old home, once a grand mansion, is now falling apart. Weeds crawl up the bricks. The gutter has fallen off. A flood in 2021 left the house without running water. It has been the victim of three separate break-ins.
“It was, and still is, extremely distressing to me,” she said.
Moore raised her children there. Her daughter, Melissa Faber, called her childhood in Corona “magical.” Her family hunted and angled there, catching fish from Corona Lake which once fed into the river.
A combination of health issues and increased river flooding pushed Moore and her family off Corona—what Moore calls “the island”—in 2007. Without a well to get water from, Moore, 89, couldn’t return even if she wanted to. She worries about the culture and history of the island being lost as more and more people move away.