Saturday, 25 January 2020
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| today's route |
I crossed the Sunflower River, which seems to be an important river to the folks in this part of the Delta because they've named a lot of things for it. It's a navigable river for more than half of its 100-mile length and flows to the Yazoo River, which flows to the Mississippi.
For much of the drive today I continued to pass flat flat crop fields, many with cotton still in them, and most with some amount of standing water.
I passed the town of Belzoni, which bills itself as the Catfish Capital of the World. I'm guessing that should more accurately be the Catfish Farm Capital of the World, because other places have catfish, but catfish farming is a major industry in the area. Of course I passed a sign saying to turn here for the Catfish Museum, but that same sign also said to turn for the Jake Town Museum. I think Jake Town was the original name for this community, with the name coming from its railroad stop. The museum claims to have artifacts dating back to 1750 BC from very early inhabitants of the region.
I crossed over a small body of water labeled Lake Atchafalaya, which sounded very Louisiana-ish to me, but this little lake is apparently separate from the bayou of the state next door.
Yazoo City
Coming into Yazoo City, I wondered where the name comes from, being also the name of the county and a major river. Wikipedia says the river got named first, in 1682 by French explorer Robert La Salle who named it for the tribe of Yazoo Indians who lived at the river's mouth. Yazoo City calls itself The Gateway To The Delta - I guess that's the southern gateway.
I wanted to stop here because it's the location of the Mississippi Cheese Straw Factory, a product that seems to be famous in the state. I'd hoped that at the least they'd sell me some product and at the most I could get a tour of the factory. I couldn't get a straight answer about either of these hopes anywhere I looked online, except that they'd be happy to sell me products by mail order, so I just came. And was disappointed.
The factory was very closed - okay, it's a Saturday - but if I hadn't seen such a robust sales push online I'd have thought the factory was nearly abandoned. It has that rundown-seen-better-days look about it and it's in the middle of a residential neighborhood that has the same look. There's no sign at all on it (probably to discourage people like me from dropping in) except for the several signs saying No Trespassing.
But I stopped in their tiny front parking lot anyway - since it is, after all, a Saturday - and walked the dogs around the neighborhood for a bit. Still, very disappointing.
Getting to the factory took me through what was probably not the part of town the city fathers would want to show tourists. Yazoo City has about 11,000 residents, which is a decent size by Mississippi standards. It seems a little tired, though that may be due to what was on the route I took.
I ran across this monument to the Civil War in the center of town. I know it looks like the lady is handing the soldier an umbrella, but it's actually a flag.And I think she's actually supposed to be a lady, rather than a symbol of Justice or something. The inscription makes it clear the monument is at least as much to the women of the Confederacy as to the soldiers.
Louise
The tiny community of Louise is about 20 minutes north of Yazoo City, and I'm sorry to say it looks like a very sad little place. I went because of my sister and now I'm sorry I did.
For one thing, it looks like everyone with any money now drives south to do their shopping - I didn't see any stores of any kind there - they were all boarded up. All I saw were a couple of government-type offices.
More than 100 people moved away from the village between the 2000 and the 2010 censuses and there are now fewer than 200 living there.
The town is quite clearly divided between prosperity and poverty, and almost certainly follows color lines. All the people I saw in the impoverished part were black. I saw no one in the prosperous part. The impoverished part consisted of tiny wooden houses on muddy rutted roads; the prosperous part consisted of very nice brick houses on medium-sized lots along the main road. Louise is surrounded by crop fields and I'm guessing the economy of this area hasn't changed a lot in the last 100 years, with the white people owning the land and the black people being paid to do the work on it.
I get stared at often as I drive through remote areas in my RV, and Louise was no exception, and here several people smiled and waved at me, which was nice. But I still wished I could figure out a way to help spread the wealth around a little more evenly there.
Back on the road
I continued to drive through rural MS countryside. Crop fields the whole way, many of them solid green from some sort of growth. I passed vast cotton fields all day. Most of the fields I've seen in MS have been bordered by trees - almost like using a crayon to outline a picture before you color inside the lines. Sometimes these lines are only as wide as a single tree - a long line of them like a hedge between fields. At other times the lines are thicker and, in some places, look like areas that were never cleared in the first place.
I passed a road named One Particular Harbor Road (for Jimmy Buffett fans). I passed another one called Grammy and Paw Lane.
I passed the Panther Swamp Wildlife Area and realized that before humans made such an impression on this land, it was likely good habitat for panthers. And at least one still seems to be around because local residents have taken photos of it within the last year.
I've been seeing many churches with "M. B." in their names. I think that stands for Missionary Baptist, a branch of the Baptist church that is a center for many African-Americans since the Civil War. It's a very common denomination in this part of MS - every community seems to have at least one MB church.
I saw so much standing water I couldn't tell how long the area had been flooded. Sometimes it looked like a new pond had been formed and the trees in it were being drowned; at others it just looked like the flooding was temporary and the trees looked sad because it's winter, after all, so of course they don't have leaves. In some places I saw a lot of cypress, making it clear the water isn't a recent occurrence, but in others the trees in the ponds were oaks or something.
During the day's drive I saw at least 4 Northern Harriers, distinctive because of the white base on their tails. I think of them as solitary birds and it was a surprise to see so many of them in one general area, hunting these waterlogged crop fields.
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| Red-tailed Hawk |
I saw lots of egrets, and saw at least 20 at once in a pond. Once I saw maybe 5 egrets in a pond with a White Pelican, which surprised me, and several times I saw Great Blue Herons either with or without the egrets.
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| Killdeer |
Then I saw several falcons that I thought were Peregrine Falcons (16"-20" tall), but the bird book says this is a little way north of their winter range. The only other choices are the Merlins and the American Kestrels, both of which have fairly noticeable facial markings and both of which can be here in the winter. But they're much shorter, with the kestrel only 10" high and the Merlin only 12" high, which is closer but its facial markings aren't as strong. I'd have to go back and look again to know for sure.
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| American Kestrel |
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| Merlin |
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| Peregrine Falcon |
And last, but by no means least, I saw a Belted Kingfisher sitting above a little stream. That's a lot of aerial hunting power packed into 1 day's drive.
On the other side of that irrigating contraption is a fairly high mound of earth, and on top of it is a 3-story house, complete with porch and columns and other nice touches. I really hope some idiot in the past didn't build a house on an Indian mound but instead came up with a novel way to keep the very nice house from getting flooded when the MS River overflows yet again.
Speaking of the river flooding, I saw quite a few large signs here and there along the road that said only "#Finish The Pumps." I'd heard nothing about it but looked it up and found a whole bunch of local controversy. I'm used to a pump project being about an oil or water pipeline, but this is about dealing with MS River flooding. This link, despite being critical of pump project opponents, still seems to provide both sides of the story, if you're interested. https://www.yallpolitics.com
I heard on the radio that two members of the space station team repaired the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer that detects cosmic rays in space. None of those words means much to me, though "cosmic rays" does seem to conjure up images of science fiction from my childhood. What an amazing world we live in!
I was horrified to see a dead dog by the side of the road and saddened to see that it was being attended by another dog, that I'm sure must have been its roommate.
I heard Scott Simon do an interview with the Haden Triplets, who I hadn't heard of, about their new album, The Family Songbook, that includes some really old country music. He played a few bits from parts of the album, and their voices are absolutely lovely in 3-part harmony. Almost ethereal at times. Here's the link if you're interested. https://www.npr.org/the-haden-triplets-sing-the-family-songbook
I passed by the towns of Rolling Fork and Onward. Rural areas of all states have towns with enormously creative names and you wonder about their history.
Near Onward I saw this historical marker. I'd heard about this hunt, of course, because of the teddy bear story, but I didn't realize that'd happened in MS. When I was searching for this photo, I found another one that's in Vicksburg. I didn't see that sign, but it's got more detail about the incident that's interesting. Here's the link. https://www.hmdb.org/t.r.
I actually saw a sign in this general area that warned it was a bear crossing area. It looked like this sign at the left. With so much open flat land, I don't know where a bear would want to go.All along today's drive I saw houses in yards that consisted mainly of mud.
Halfway through the drive today I tried to turn down the Great River Road, which is State Route 1 in this area, only to find it closed to through traffic, which I certainly am. I wasn't about to find out the hard way why the road was closed but assume the flood warnings for the lower MS River were accurate. Nothing wrong with staying on US-61, which actually is designated the Great River Road for part of its length in MS, but I'd just hoped to get closer to the river.
Vicksburg Military Park
I got into town earlier than I'd expected - probably because I hadn't been able to go down Route 1 - so I decided to go by the National Park Service area commemorating the siege and battle of Vicksburg during the Civil War.
The campaign for Vicksburg didn't begin right away, but it had to come because this city was is such a critical position.
Pres. Lincoln said, "Vicksburg is the key. And the war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket." When Gen. Grant was beginning the Vicksburg campaign, his commanding officer Gen. Halleck wrote to him: "The eyes and hopes of the whole country are now directed at your army. In my opinion the opening of the Mississippi River will be to us more advantage than the capture of forty Richmonds." And CSA Pres. Davis said Vicksburg was "the nailhead that holds the South's two halves together." But hey, no pressure, right?
Vicksburg was, in some ways, a natural fortress for the South: the town sat below 300' bluffs that overlooked the Mississippi River; the river was even more of a transportation artery then than now because there were so few alternatives. At least today we've got cars, trucks and airplanes. Then, they had railroads, rivers and a lot of untamed land.The exhibit at right shows the situation from the Union's perspective in 1862. The following exhibits show events of 1863.
Vicksburg was called the Gibraltar of the Confederacy because of its artillery on the high bluff above the Mississippi. It also had some natural ravines around the town that the South used as trenches for defense (see map below right). In all, it was a formidable location and it's no wonder it took Grant so long to figure out how to capture it.
The topo map at right shows the natural defenses Vicksburg presented.The North's siege of Vicksburg lasted 47 days. It wasn't just the blockade they set up to stop food and supplies from getting in. It was also the continuous bombardment from artillery by the US Navy.
The Confederate soldiers had been holding out because they expected reinforcements. Some coming from Louisiana were repulsed by a newly formed outfit of African-American soldiers; others coming from Jackson didn't actually show up until the surrender and were chased back to Jackson by Grant's troops.
A few days after Vicksburg surrendered, Port Hudson downriver in Louisiana also surrendered and the Union finally controlled the MS River. It was, as Lincoln said, a key to ending the war.
This information (and a lot more) is in the Visitor Center, which I'd remembered from when Momma and I stopped here some years ago as being larger than it is. I remember we spent most of our time here following the driving tour of the park, which I didn't do today. All along the road we saw monuments to various military units - both North and South - and signs that describe the skirmishes at different locations in the area.
Vicksburg National Cemetery is also part of the park. Around 13,000 of the 17,000 Union soldiers buried there are unidentified. Confederates were buried in a separate cemetery - separate in death as in life, which I find very sad.
A side note: I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the National Park Service charges a fairly hefty admission fee to this park. I managed to skate through because I've got one of those Lifetime Passes for senior citizens, good at all national parks. At a one-time fee of $10, it's absolutely the best investment I've ever made. I used it to get into Chincoteague, too, if I remember right.
I drove on from here to tonight's campground a few miles down the road, tired from a lot of driving today.
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