Historic Markers in Mississippi

Hattiesburg, MS

These weathered buildings are all that remain of Bonhomie, a company-owned sawmill town that the Tatum Lumber Company built here in 1915. For four decades laborers and their families lived in the shadow of the mill, part of the vast Southern pine industry that stripped and reshaped Mississippi's forests. When the timber and the mill's fortunes ran out, the town faded by 1956.

Pontotoc County, MS

In the 1820s, the Chickasaw village known here as "Pontatock," set along the ancient Natchez Trace, held the council house that served as the seat of the Chickasaw Nation. From this ground the nation deliberated its affairs in the decade before the pressures of removal drove the Chickasaw west of the Mississippi. The site marks a center of self-government for one of the great nations of the Southeast on the eve of a wrenching displacement.

Biloxi, MS

Built in 1934 on the Biloxi waterfront, this reinforced-concrete barracks served the U.S. Coast Guard during an era when the service was expanding its Gulf Coast presence. Its E-shaped Spanish Colonial Revival design reflects the popular public-building style of the Depression years along the Mississippi coast. The structure housed the men who patrolled these waters for rescue, navigation, and enforcement duties.

Amory, MS

This memorial in Amory honors local men who served in the Korean War, the hard-fought conflict of 1950–1953 that Americans sometimes called the 'Forgotten War.' Its stark dedication — 'their lives for our freedom' — speaks for the soldiers from small Mississippi towns who shipped out to a cold, distant peninsula. Communities across the South raised such markers to ensure that sacrifice in a war overshadowed by others would not be forgotten at home.

Lamar County, MS

On July 8, 1889, on Richburg Hill in southern Mississippi, John L. Sullivan outlasted Jake Kilrain over an astonishing seventy-five rounds under the broiling sun to keep his heavyweight crown. It was the last major bare-knuckle heavyweight championship in America — after it, the padded gloves and rounds of the Marquess of Queensberry rules took over the sport. Fought quietly to dodge anti-prizefighting laws, the bout became instant legend.

Oxford, MS

This white-columned house on the edge of Oxford was raised around 1848, in the cotton-wealthy years before the Civil War, and later took the name Rowan Oak from its owner, Nobel laureate William Faulkner, who lived and wrote here from 1930 until 1962. Faulkner bought the run-down antebellum place and restored it by hand, and its quiet grounds and cedar-lined walk became the private world behind the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Much of his greatest work took shape in these rooms.