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The New Madrid Bend is an almost 360º oxbow turn in the Mississippi River right at the junction of the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. As a result, the 17.5 square miles of land within the New Madrid Bend is a disconnected portion of Kentucky that exists entirely within the state of Tennessee. This odd place, lovingly referred to as Bubbleland, played host for over sixty years to a violent feud – sparked by an argument over a horse between the Darnell and Watson families. Mark Twain wrote about the feud in "Life on the Mississippi", saying “in no part of the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer between warring families, than in this particular region…Every year or so, somebody was shot, on one side or the other, and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud and kept it a-going.”