Shannon—West Point—Macon, 84.1 m. State 23, State 25.
Mobile & Ohio R.R. parallels route.
Graveled roadbed two lanes wide.
Accommodations in towns.
This route is a central artery through the gently rolling Black Prairie Belt, a dairying, and alfalfa and cotton growing country of warm black soil, good drainage, and long, mild seasons for cultivation. Except for the first few miles, where hills thinly forested with oak, gum, and elm furnish the landscape, the scene is typically prairie. From Okolona southward to Macon practically every acre of land is being used either for farming or dairying, and the careful economy of the country is everywhere evident. Unbroken stretches of furrowed fields, substantial barns, windmills, silos, and fat cattle cropping the grassy plains make a prairie picture that is more typical of Kansas than of Mississippi.
State 23 branches S. from US 45 (see Tour 4) at SHANNON, 0 m. (see Tour 4), and moves through alternating farmlands and wooded hills. The hills often show white patches of limestone that appear bare and white in the midst of trees and cultivated land. As the hills lose themselves in the flat Chiwapa Creek bottoms, the trees thin out and the increasingly rich soil and the flattening landscape set the stage for the prairie country immediately S.
At 5-3 m. the highway crosses Tallabinnela Creek.
OKOLONA, 8.3 m. (304 alt., 2,235 pop.), wavers between the prairie and the hills, an old town inhabited almost entirely by natives. Originally called Prairie Mount and standing six miles N. on a stagecoach route, the town moved itself to the proposed line of the new Mobile & Ohio R.R. in 1848, adopting the new name Okolona at that time. In 1859 the railroad was built through. During the War between the States the town was raided several times. In 1864 the hospital, depot, and 100,000 bushels of corn were burned; in 1865 another detachment of Union troops visited the town and this time burned it completely. In the CONFEDERATE CEMETERY on the outskirts of town are buried 1,000 soldiers killed in the Federal raids. The older inhabitants have forgiven and forgotten the fighting and burning, but they still say that it was the Commissary Department of the Federals that first brought the bitterweed into the prairie. If eaten by cows, the weed gives a bitter taste to their milk, and because the prairie is a dairying section this often bitter-tasting milk is a constant reminder that Federal troops once fought their way across the flat landscape.
A CHEESE FACTORY AND CREAMERY to take care of milk products of the vicinity is the newest industrial plant. On the western edge of the city limits is an 80-acre MUNICIPAL PARK. Here are a swimming pool, skeet grounds, lighted tennis courts, a well-stocked lake, and a children’s wading pool. In the center of the park is a large convention hall, more often used for dancing than for conventions.
EGYPT, 17 m. (300 alt., 150 pop.), was established just prior to the War between the States when the Mobile & Ohio R.R. was built through in 1858. It was named for the variety of corn grown here. During the war corn was hauled here to await shipment to the Confederate army, but before this could be accomplished Federal troops passed through and burned it. The town has grown but little since that time.
At 18.9 m. the highway crosses the northern boundary of the NATCHEZ TRACE FORESTRY AND FEDERAL GAME PRESERVE, which embraces 30,000 acres of submarginal land lying in Chickasaw and Pontotoc Counties. Headquarters of this area are in Okolona.
As the highway moves southward it penetrates the prairie’s heart. This is wide and open country. The miles of earth rolling to meet far horizons make the houses, barns, and even the towns look dwarfed and squat. Dairy farms alternate with plowed acres of rich, black earth. Here the ancestors of the older families built a culture that equaled that of the Natchez district. But the younger families, those who have moved in after the War between the States, have felt not so much the pull of the land as the energy of a people who emerged apparently metamorphosed by the war. A few have proved themselves such exponents of change that they are willing to break with the land entirely and turn to industry, making the modern prairie Mississippi’s laboratory for the New South.
At 32.7 m. is the junction with State 25; State 23 and State 25 unite for several miles.
WEST POINT, 41 m. (241 alt., 4,677 pop.), a roomy, prosperous town fed by the farms and dairies of the surrounding flat lands, epitomizes the prairie. Significantly, it developed on a section of land known as the Granary of Dixie, which two Indian braves, Te-wa-ea and Ish-tim-ma-ha, sold to James Robertson in 1844. Though a battleground during the War between the States, the town, that once had moved itself from the extreme corner of the county to be on the new railroad, was considered so attractive by a number of Federal officers that they came back after the war and settled here permanently. In reconstruction days the town was the leader in Clay County’s Ku Klux Klan activities, but immediately after white domination was restored, the people here opened one of the few private schools for Negroes. The school, MARY HOLMES SEMINARY, a fully-accredited junior college supported by the Presbyterian Church, is still a flourishing institution. On a large, shaded campus, the brick, one-story laundry, Music Hall, and Domestic Science Hall are grouped around the three-story red brick administration building which contains 112 rooms.
There are eight factories besides cottonseed oil mills, gins, and lumber companies in West Point. The WEST POINT POULTRY AND PACKING PLANT is the largest in the mid-South.
Between West Point and Artesia the highway passes between fields of waving alfalfa hay to descend into the marshy bottoms of Tibbee Creek. Here Tibbee often spills over its ill-defined banks to cover miles of surrounding flat lands, affording excellent fishing and hunting.
At 43.5 m. is a large stone that marks the SITE OF AN OLD INDIAN CAMP GROUND. Across the highway at diagonal angles N. and S. are two other markers on INDIAN BURIAL GROUNDS. The northern marker is backed by a large tree-studded burial mound of the Chickasaw; the southern sign marks the site of a Choctaw mound. Legend says that the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes once fought a great battle at this spot and that after the battle each buried its dead in a separate mound. In 1934 Moreau B. Chambers, Field Archaeologist for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, uncovered several burials in the Chickasaw mound. The markers were placed by the Horseshoe Robertson Chapter, D. A. R.
At 46.1 m. the highway crosses TIBBEE (Ind., water fight) CREEK on a steel and concrete bridge. Tibbee was named for the battle in which the Choctaw and Chickasaw annihilated the main part of the Chakchiuma tribe. The battle site is fixed by legend at Lyon’s Bluff approximately five miles upstream from this bridge.
Rising almost imperceptibly from the creek bottom, the highway passes into country of peaceful pasture lands, where cattle and sheep graze in waist-high clover and alfalfa.
At 46 m. State 23 branches from State 25; L. here on the latter.
MAYHEW, 52.8 m. (207 alt., 172 pop.), is a small agricultural village that took its name from the mission established by the Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury of Massachusetts, who came here in 1818 to Christianize the Indians. The village is today the home of a very large APIARY containing 5,000 colonies of bees from which shipments are made to many places in America and Europe.
ARTESIA, 55 m. (223 alt., 612 pop.), is the junction point of the main line of the Mobile & Ohio R.R. and its Columbus and Starkville branches. It takes its name from an artesian well N. of the depot. Unusually large quantities of hay are shipped from this point.
Between here and Macon the dominant features of the landscape are the HEDGES OF OSAGE ORANGE TREES planted in fence-like rows along the prairie’s edge. The highway runs like a narrow lane between their thorny, tangled branches. In winter these prickly trees are etched grayly against the sky, but in summer they burst into smooth green leaves and pale yellowish blossoms, which are replaced by orange-like inedible fruit. Many of these hedges were planted more than a century ago and constitute the pioneer planters’ mark upon the land. They confined stock and kept prying Indians out of cornfields, and they conveyed to neighbors the idea that the land encircled by the thorny fences was private property. Sometimes called bois d’ arc (Fr., wood of the ark), these trees, according to legend, furnished the sturdy wood out of which Noah built the ark. When lumber is cut from the trees, the tough wood often breaks the teeth of the saw.
At 74.9 m. is the junction with a graveled road.
Right on this road 0.5 m. is BROOKSVILLE (269 alt., 875 pop.), a quiet old prairie town of old-fashioned homes softened by an even spread of shade.
Southward from here the houses, cattle, barns, fields, and pastures are typical of the prairie country. In winter the landscape reveals the bare black soil; in summer and spring the land shows a soft, pastoral character, with orchards of peach and apple trees in bloom, fields of alfalfa, and grassy meadows that stretch across low-rolling hills to meet the sky.
At 84.1 m. is MACON (114 alt., 2,198 pop.) (see Tour 4), and the junction with US 45 (see Tour 4).