Indiana's Big Blue River, also known as "Big Muddy", is located in Henry County. The river is 75 miles long and generally flows southwest past New Castle and Shelbyville, to the East fork of White River near Edinburg.  It also forms the eastern boundary of Crawford County and provides approximately 30 miles of water for fishing, small boats, and canoes. For these 30 miles the Big Blue River is considered to be one of the purest streams in Indiana, and it is the first river to be included in the Indiana Natural and Scenic Rivers Systems.
    Unfortunately, for the other 55 miles of the river this is not the case.  The other 55 miles of the river are muddy, hence the nickname "Big Muddy", and filled with garbage and waste.  Several volunteer groups have taken place to try and clean up the dump that has been entered into the river.  One of these volunteer groups in known as a "Day of Caring" that took place on September 11, 2001.
    A group of students and adults got together and spent nearly four hours a day trying to clean up the river!  They would have spent more time but the fatigue became so intense that they could not handle it.  On the first day, the group found shopping carts, buckets, and tires, many, many tires!  By the end of the adventure they found many more things such as barrels, man holes, and women's purses which they turned into the police station.
    This cleanup program continued into the Spring of 2002. Clean-ups will continue to go on forever until the river is as clean as it can be, and still qualify to be in Indiana's Natural and Scenic River's Systems. Public access points are located up and down the river (some of which are shown on the map at the top of this page) at Fredricksburg, Milltown, Rothrock Mill, and Harrison-Crawford State forest.  The picture below was taken to promote the clean-ups that took place for the "Big Muddy".