Railroad Stations: Union Station, Front St. and 19th Ave., for Mobile & Ohio R.R., Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R.R., and Southern R.R.; 22nd Ave. and D St., for Gulf, Mobile & Northern R.R.
Bus Station: Union Station, 2306 6th St., for Tri-State Transit Co., Teche-Greyhound, Magnolia Motor, and Capital Motor Lines.
Local Busses: Intra-city, 5¢ per person.
Taxis: Intra-city, 10¢ per person.
Airport: Key Field, 2 m. SW. of city on US 11, for Delta Airlines, taxi fare 15¢, time 10 min.
Traffic Regulations: Speed limit 30 mph. Turns may be made in either direction at intersections of all streets except where lights direct otherwise. Parking limitations marked in yellow on pavement.
Street order and numbering: Streets run east and west, avenues north and south. Front (3rd) St. parallel to and north of railroad starts numbering at 100.
Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, Threefoot Building, NW. cor. 22nd Ave. and 6th St.
Accommodations: Four hotels; five tourist camps.
Radio Station: WCOC (880 kc.).
Motion Picture Houses: Three.
Golf: Northwood Country Club, Magnolia Drive, 2 m. N., moderate greens fee; Meridian Country Club, 4.5 m. N. on Poplar Springs Drive, moderate greens fee.
Swimming: Municipal Pool, Highland Park, 38th Ave. and 16th St.
Tennis: Municipal courts, Highland Park.
Riding: Massey Academy, Highland Park.
Annual Events: Mississippi Fair and Dairy Show, first wk. in Oct.; Confederate Memorial Day, April 26th at courthouse and Rose Hill Cemetery; Intercollegiate Athletic Association Event, Stadium, Magnolia Drive, Thanksgiving Day.
MERIDIAN (341 alt., 31,954 pop.), Mississippi’s second largest city, lies among the most southerly of the Appalachian foothills, a region characterized by heavy forests and outcroppings of buff-colored limestone. In harmony with the surrounding hills, native rock is used for building material, and elms and live-oaks like giant grenadiers line the walks. Yet it is a railroad and industrial town, and as such has its shops and districts where the poorer workmen live.
Laid out with singular lack of design, Meridian, viewed from the air, is like a vast spider web with a multitude of streets intersecting at curious angles and coming to abrupt endings. Cutting through the web near its center are numerous railroad tracks, dividing the business section from the industrial district. At the heart of the web is the city’s most salient piece of architecture, the Threefoot Building. The only skyscraper in Meridian, this building rises 17 stories, its brightly decorated tower dwarfing the buildings dotted below. The southern and eastern boundaries of the city are arched by the humped ridges of the foothills, known locally as Mount Barton. This is Meridian’s playground, with stone and log cabins, lodges, and fishing camps stuck along the rugged slopes. Between the mountain and the city proper are the mill districts, Southside and Tuxedo, where a great part of the city’s laboring class lives in two- and three-room rented houses. The wealth of the city’s merchant class expresses itself in attractive residential suburbs fringing north Meridian. Every architectural style is being tried here, with the English cottage and manor house of native limestone the most conspicuous. The rugged topography of this section lends itself to both sunken and rock gardens, and the charming effects created with stone and flora are noteworthy.
In 1831 Richard McLemore migrated from South Carolina to clear a plantation on the present site of Meridian. Soon he was offering free land to settlers who he thought would make desirable neighbors. In 1854, when Mississippi’s pre-war railroad building was nearing its climax, plans were made for the Vicksburg & Montgomery R.R. (Alabama & Vicksburg) to cross the Mobile & Ohio line. The former was to cross the State east and west, the latter to follow close to the eastern boundary from north to south; their junction was to be on McLemore’s plantation. McLemore sold his plantation to L. A. Ragsdale and J. T. Ball, pioneer railroad men, and they immediately built the one-room, red and yellow “union station.” But it was not until 1861, one year after Meridian had been incorporated as a town, that the Vicksburg & Montgomery train arrived from Vicksburg.
Other railroads became interested in the junction which, though small, quickly assumed the air of an important railroad center. But this attitude of suddenly acquired importance made the future city’s first year extremely difficult. The farmers who lived on the plantation before the railroads were built pridefully considered themselves the junction’s first citizens; the families who came in with the railroads boasted that they were building the town, and, with the pride of achievement, assumed the rank of leaders. The contest between farmer and mechanic was intensified when one of the two city fathers, believing the word “meridian” to be synonymous with junction, determined on that name for the village, while the other, supported by the farmer families, chose “Sowashee” (Ind., mad river), name of the nearby creek. Each morning the first would nail up the sign “Meridian,” and each night the second would tear it down to make way for his own “Sowashee.” Instead of compromising, the two fathers selected different plans for laying out the city streets. One day one of them would drive stakes in line with his plan. The next day the other would pull up his rival’s stakes and drive some of his own. It was a struggle that has affected the city to this day. For even though the continued development of the railroads and the consequent influx of railroad workers overruled contrary opinion and left “Meridian” on the union station permanently, the confused plans for laying out the city have given Meridian the appearance of having been formed by some giant who playfully gathered up a handful of triangles and dropped them at the junction of two railroads.
Railroads with their noisy shops, and trains with their screaming whistles and their engines puffing steam and smoke, changed the quiet plantation life in Meridian to one of excitement. Government mail contracts, the lifeblood of the early railroads, were awarded to the trains that could make the fastest time, and were determined by racing these trains from one terminal to another. In 1883 the Louisville & Nashville’s crack train left Cincinnati on the dot with the Queen & Crescent, both bound for New Orleans. Excitement ran high, especially at Meridian where the Queen & Crescent changed engines. The latter train steamed into New Orleans eight hours ahead of its rival and established the fastest time then on record. A few years later the Meridian shops despatched a special train to Lumberton to carry a physician on an emergency call. This train covered the 112 miles between Meridian and Lumberton in exactly 112 minutes, and set a new record. Once a month Meridian’s railroad men went to the banks of Sowashee Creek to enjoy a beer party and poker game. But the pride of the shops was the old wrecker car that had been reconditioned as a sort of restaurant and bar and was presided over by a Negro named “Bob,” the best cook in east Mississippi. The wrecker held open house each day in the week and when the higher officials visited Meridian it was to the wrecker they went to order one of “Black Bob’s” specials.
When the War between the States began, Meridian, with a population of about 100, was made a Confederate military camp and division headquarters. Troops were stationed here and arsenals and cantonments were built. In 1863 the State records were moved here for safekeeping, and for one month the town was the State’s capital. In February 1864, General Sherman’s troops, marching across the State from Jackson, entered the town. Several days later Sherman made his official report: “For five days, 10,000 men worked hard with a will in that work of destruction with axes, crowbars, sledges, clawbars, and fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists.”
Rebuilt after the war, Meridian, as a railroad center, grew rapidly, becoming a magnet that attracted a rabble of adventurers who came into the State seeking to share in the spoils of radical reconstruction. In 1871 a riot—prominent in Mississippi’s reconstruction history—took place when one of several Negroes on trial for urging mob violence shot the presiding judge. A party of whites who were interested in the trial immediately formed a mob, killed between 25 and 30 Negroes, and burned a Negro school. This riot was followed by a yellow fever epidemic in 1878, which almost depopulated the town, and in 1906 a cyclone struck the city with considerable damage to life and property.
But Meridian survived these disasters and again achieved prominence as a railroad center. By the end of the century, however, manufacturing was competing with railroading for first place. A cotton mill established late in 1890 was the initial effort. In 1913 the commission form of government was adopted, and under the guidance of a mayor and two commissioners 90 industrial plants, including a large shirt and garment factory and three hosiery mills, have been established. These industries have done much to modify the city’s railroad tone and have brought into it a new type of labor, the farm boy and girl. Drawn from the farms and villages of the environs by the attractions of city life these young people have been swallowed up by the factory system. A few commute daily from their homes to the factory, but the majority find cheap lodgings in the city’s Southside. To the Negroes, who make up 35 percent of Meridian’s population, fall the jobs requiring unskilled labor. They are used especially in sawmills, cottonseed oil mills, and gins, where strength and hardiness are requisite. As in most southern cities, the servant class is exclusively Negro, and, though Meridian is well dotted with Negro districts composed of one- and two-room rented cabins with tiny dirt plot yards, a few white people maintain servants’ quarters in the rear of their homes for their cooks, nurses, or chauffeurs.
Not until recent years did agriculture attempt to regain the prestige it early lost to railroading and manufacturing. With the encouragement of diversified farming, stock, and poultry raising in the surrounding country, Meridian has gained recognition as an important market for vegetables, fruit, poultry, and livestock. With a view to building up the livestock industry of the county, the Meridian Union Stockyards were established in 1935. This plant occupies 14 acres of a triangle bounded by the tracks of the Southern, Mobile & Ohio, Illinois Central, and Gulf, Mobile & Northern railroads, and its buildings and pens accommodate approximately 5,000 head of stock. This is the State’s largest stockyard.
Second to agriculture in importance is the lumber industry. Given a fresh impetus by the maturity of second growth stands of timber, six large and numerous small lumber mills operate full time, cutting pine timber. One company, the only hardwood mill in the city, cuts a daily average of 35,000 feet of gum, oak, poplar, ash, hickory, and magnolia.
Tour—10m.
N. from the World War Monument on 23rd Ave.
1. SCOTTISH RITE CATHEDRAL, NW. corner 23rd Ave. and 11th St., is based upon the design of the Temple of Isis at Philae, Egypt. The two-story structure is built of brick and concrete, faced with native Bowling Green limestone and ornamented with polychrome terra cotta. The symbols on the terra cotta decorations of the façade, as well as the obelisks, are typically Egyptian; on each side of the long flight of steps leading to the entrance are buttresses with a Sphinx and obelisk on each, the four sides of the obelisk being cut with Egyptian characters. The two massive round columns surmounting the steps are conspicuous for their bell-shaped capitals as well as for their monumental proportions. The interior contains banquet hall, ballroom, pool room, library, offices, assembly room, organ room, and kitchen. Striking and colorful Egyptian designs cover the walls of the foyer.
R. from 23rd Ave. on 11th St.; R. on 18th Ave.
2. McLEMORE HOUSE, 1009 18th Ave. (private), is built around the original log home of Richard McLemore, the town’s first settler. The present house is a mixed style of architecture and the original design of the McLemore house, built in 1837, has been obliterated. The site, however, is interesting as a landmark of the town’s birthplace.
R. from 18th Ave. on 4th St.
3. The SOULE STEAM FEED WORKS, NE. corner 4th St. and 19th Ave. (open by permission), is a machine shop and foundry with international distribution. Organized in 1893, it manufactures sawmill and oil well machinery, and forges cast and wrought iron and brass products.
L. from 4th St. on 22nd Ave.
4. MERIDIAN GARMENT FACTORY, 22nd Ave. S. between B and C Sts. (open weekdays 8-4; tours), is a square, two-story building of concrete and structural steel. The outside walls are broken by 11,500 window lights framed by projected steel sashes. The central hall is reached by five entrances, each with fire-latch doors. The interior columns and floors are of hardwood. The first floor is divided into offices, laundry, and shipping department; on the second floor are cutting, sewing, and first-aid rooms. Employing between 500 and 600 operators, this factory produces approximately 900 dozen shirts a day.
5. HAMM LUMBER MILL, 22nd Ave. S. (open weekdays 9-5; tours), began operation in 1917 to plane and process hardwood timber. Cutting hardwood exclusively, it has a daily capacity of 40,000 feet, and employs approximately 60 persons.
Retrace 22nd Ave.; L. on A St.
6. MERIDIAN GRAIN ELEVATOR PLANT, A St. between Rubush and Grand Aves. (open weekdays 8-4; guides), is the only milling plant in the State using the de-germinator method of manufacturing grits and cream meal, and the only one requiring a health certificate semiannually from its employees. Surrounded by a forest of elevators, 22 of which are used in making grits, this plant can mill 300 bushels of corn per hour. Because of the uniformity required in the grain, the corn used is shipped in from the Corn Belt. In general, the season for making meal starts in January and extends through September; for grits, the season is from September through May.
L. from A St. on Rubush Ave.; R. on B St.; R. on 31st Ave.
7. SWIFT & COMPANY OIL MILL, 31st Ave. at railroad tracks, (open by permission), is housed in two adjoining buildings, each constructed of sheet iron and two stories high. The company manufactures cottonseed oil with its byproducts, hulls, meal, and cotton linters.
8. The J. H. GARY HOUSE, 905 31st Ave. (private), in a somber setting of magnolia trees, is a white, two-story frame house with a broad gallery and classic columns. Similar columns uphold a porte-cochère at one side. The single story ell, which extends to the rear, was the headquarters of Gen. Leonidas Polk, Commander of the Confederate troops stationed in Meridian.
Retrace 31st Ave.; R. on 7th St.
9. In ROSE HILL CEMETERY, 7th St. and 40th Ave., is GYPSY QUEEN’S GRAVE. In a concrete vault armored with steel, is the burial place of the wife of Emil Mitchell, King of all gypsies in the United States. The Queen, Kelly Mitchell, who died in 1915 in Lititia, Ala., was buried here in her Romany dress strung with gold coins dating back to 1750. Until the King’s remarriage gypsies from all parts of the country made periodic pilgrimages here.
Retrace 7th St.; L. on 38th Ave.; L. on 16 St.
10. The ARBORETUM, Highland Park, intersection of 16th St. and 38th Ave. (R), displays native shrubs, ferns, and wild flowers in a natural setting.
R. from 16th St. on the Asylum Road, graveled, to 20th St.
11. The EAST MISSISSIPPI INSANE HOSPITAL, entrance L. (visiting hours 9:30-4:30 daily), was constructed in 1882. The buildings, half hidden in a great grove of trees and reached by a circular drive, are grouped about the administration building, which is constructed of brick, four stories high, and designed in the form of an E. The majority of the smaller buildings also are of brick and have more the appearance of large gingerbread style houses than of institutional designs. The landscaped grounds are one of the showplaces of Meridian. The hospital, with land, buildings, and equipment, is valued at $814,457. There are approximately 850 patients at the institution; the average yearly cost per patient is about $258.
POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS
U. S. Horticultural Experiment Station, 3.5 m. (see Tour 4); Grave of Sam Dale, pioneer scout and soldier, 19.2 m. (see Side Tour 4B).