A. Grand Lake Cutoff
Mile 511.0 AHP
An oxbow lake two miles west of the river, Grand Lake, was removed from the channel by this natural cutoff in the 1700’s. The small river town of Princeton grew up on the west bank, with a busy landing. . . . — — Map (db m115524) HM
As early as the 1730's, a few British traders lived among the Chickasaw in this area, but Great Britain's brief ascendancy on the Lower Mississippi did not began until 1763. In that year, the British defeated France in the Seven Years' War and took . . . — — Map (db m82852) HM
A) Head of Passes
Mile 0.0 AHP
The Mississippi River officially ends here, 954 miles from Cairo, Illinois. At this point, the stream divides into three channels, Pass a Louture, South Pass, and Southern Pass. They each branch into . . . — — Map (db m114914) HM
A) Hog Point, Louisiana
Mile 298.2 AHP
The channel off Hog Point, in the middle of Raccourci Cutoff, has long been one of the most troublesome stretches on the lower river. Constant dredging is required to keep the channel open. . . . — — Map (db m115003) HM
Mary Grimes Hutchison (1872-1962), a pioneer in rigorous education for girls in Memphis, opened her school in the Wesley Halliburton home in 1902. By 1925. Hutchison School had become a leading girls' college preparatory school, and its expanding . . . — — Map (db m200789) HM
A) Hymelia Crevasse
Mile 131.3 AHP
In 1903, a 200-foot gap opened in the levee at Hymelia Plantation. One thousand laborers were put to work constructing a sandbag fill but a runaway barge crashed into the repairs and destroyed them. . . . — — Map (db m114926) HM
A) Island No. 20
Mile 8290 AHP
The wandering geography of Island No. 20 illustrates the Mississippi River's erratic nature. Navigation charts of 1801 show the island lying near the west bank. Later, the river moved and placed the . . . — — Map (db m114737) HM
A) Island No. 5 (Wolf Island)
Mile 933.0 AHP
Kentucky and Missouri fought all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court for possession of Wolf Island. Missouri’s attorneys presented an array of old maps and navigation charts that showed the . . . — — Map (db m114730) HM
A) Islands No. 2, 3, and 4
Mile 940.5 AHP
Zadok Cramer first numbered the islands of the Lower Mississippi River in his 1801 book, The Navigator. The number system allowed boatmen to exchange river information without becoming . . . — — Map (db m114729) HM
A) Junior Crevasse
Mile 55.0 AHP
During the great flood of April 1927, the steamship Inspector was fought erratic currents downstream past the Junior Plantation. The pilot lost control and the boat’s bow crashed into the levee. . . . — — Map (db m114920) HM
A) Kenner, Louisiana
Mile 113.0 AHP
This community grew up on a sugar plantation owned by the Kenner family and became a railroad stop in the antebellum years. During the U.S. Civil War, Union troops were sent to Kenner to destroy the . . . — — Map (db m114924) HM
A) Lake Providence, Louisiana
Mile 487.3 AHP
To guide a boat past this point without falling prey to murderous pirates of the area was considered an “act of providence” in the early 1800’s. Both the ancient oxbow lake to the . . . — — Map (db m115522) HM
A) Lutcher, Louisiana
Mile 147.6 AHP
Tobacco was never a very successful cash crop for early French settlers, with the notable exception of Pierre Channet, who lived near here. The “Perique tobacco” he developed is still . . . — — Map (db m114928) HM
In August, 1878, fear of death caused a panic during which 30,000 of 50,000 Memphians fled this bluff city. By October, the epidemic of yellow fever killed 4,204 of 6,000 Caucasians and 946 of 14,000 Negros who stayed. With some outside help, . . . — — Map (db m7583) HM
Founded in the downtown area in 1893 by Principals E.S. Werts and J.W.S Rhea, Memphis University School soon became the city's leading boys' preparartory school. Although the "old MUS" succumbed to the Great Depression in 1936, alumni and friends . . . — — Map (db m87087) HM
Memphis, Tennessee Its central location on the Mississippi River has been the basis for Memphis’s growth. The fourth Chickasaw Bluff was long occupied by the Native American tribe for whom it was named. France and later Spain built forts there . . . — — Map (db m115006) HM
Mertie W. Buckman was known in Memphis as a prominent philanthropist who provided her talent, energy and financial support to many initiatives in our community. She wanted her life to make a difference-to connect to and impact the larger . . . — — Map (db m132048) HM
A0 Mounds Landing Crevasse
Mile 560.5 AHP
The Mounds Landing Crevasse was the most disastrous levee break during the great flood of 1927. The levee was old, originally built in 1867, and a ferryboat’s frequent landings had weakened the . . . — — Map (db m115528) HM
A. Mulatto Bend
Mile 236.6 AHP
A group of Mulatto Freedmen of French dissent established a settlement here in the early 1800’s and the river pilots named it Mulatto Bend. Wilkinson Point at the crook of the bend suffered a major washout in . . . — — Map (db m115000) HM
To the south lay this plantation. Here, in 1827, a Scottish spinster heiress named Francis Wright set up a colony whose aims were the enforcement of cooperative living and other advanced sociological experiments. It failed in 1830. — — Map (db m85673) HM
A. Natchez Island
Mile 357.5 AHP
Now joined to the Louisiana shore, this island was the site of one of the last steamboat accidents on the Mississippi River. The Tennessee Belle was a 38-year veteran of the river trade when she caught fire . . . — — Map (db m115162) HM
French settlers arrived in the early 1700’s establishing Fort Rosalie and a small plantation. The Natchez attacked in 1729, killing most of the settlers and French retaliation virtually destroyed the tribe. The British arrived in 1763, but Spain . . . — — Map (db m115161) HM
A) New Madrid, Missouri
Mile 888.7 AHP
The New Madrid townsite was laid out in 1788 by Colonel George Morgan, who had brought settlers, hoping to make it the capital of an independent Spanish-allied state. The expected land grant from . . . — — Map (db m114732) HM
Mile 95.0 AHP
Throughout its long and colorful history, New Orleans has been both a center of commerce and Mecca for seekers of a good time. As the Mississippi’s gateway to international trade, it has become the third largest port in the . . . — — Map (db m114923) HM
In the 1700s, the western boundary of the British Crown Colony of North Carolina extended, in theory, to the Mississippi River. Much of this was academic, however, and the western Tennessee territory which bordered the river was in fact the . . . — — Map (db m53732) HM
Winding 981 miles to Cairo, Illinois from its Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania head, the Ohio has been an important force in America’s history and its economy. Pioneers made it the highroad to western expansion after the American Revolution. The Ohio . . . — — Map (db m114727) HM
A) Ostrica Lock
Mile 25.2 AHP
This lock connects the river to the Gulf of Mexico through a short channel extending north into Breton Sound. It is used chiefly by fishermen, crew boats, and pleasure craft.
B) Buras, Louisiana . . . — — Map (db m114916) HM
A.Palmetto Bend
Mile 326.0 AHP
This bend and the plantation that lay on its bank were named for the Palmetto, a type of palm tree that was utilized by early settlers and found in abundance in this area. The trunks made durable wharf . . . — — Map (db m115158) HM
A) Plaquemine, Louisiana
Mile 208.2 AHP
The settlement that arose at the mouth of the Bayou Plaquemine took as its name the Native American word for the fruit, persimmon. Early settlers traveled on the bayou, but as the Mississippi . . . — — Map (db m114992) HM
A key part of the rock 'n' roll wave that swept America in the 1950s started in these Quonset huts. R. E. "Buster” Williams, a self-educated engineer, opened Plastic Products in 1949 with equipment he had researched and designed himself. . . . — — Map (db m149041) HM
A) Point a La Hache, Louisiana
Mile 45.0 AHP
French explorers named the slight curve in the river bank “Point of the Axe.” It is the end of the Mainline Levee System on the east bank.
B) Magnolia Plantation, Louisiana . . . — — Map (db m114919) HM
A) Port Hudson, Louisiana
Mile 256.0 AHP
This settlement began as a trading post and by the time of the U.S. Civil War, it was an important shipping center with both a steamboat landing and a rail line to the east. The Confederates . . . — — Map (db m115001) HM
A tremendous earthquake struck this region on December 16, 1811, beginning a three-month series of violent quakes that devastated over 40,000 square miles. Named for the largest settlement in the region, the New Madrid earthquakes altered local . . . — — Map (db m114736) HM
A) Rodney Cutoff
Mile 388.0 AHP
Opened in 1936 the Rodney Cutoff bypassed an old river bend and the ghost town that once was the busy river town of Rodney. Over 4,000 people lived in the town of Rodney in the 1850’s and its bustling port . . . — — Map (db m115165) HM
Shelby County Established 1819; named in honor of ISAAC SHELBY who, along with Andrew Jackson, was appointed United States Commissioner; together they arranged the purchase of the Western District from the Chickasaw Indian Nation . . . — — Map (db m82859) HM
Shelby County Hospital
Completed in June of 1935, the Shelby County Hospital at Shelby Farms was built here as a replacement for both the much older Shelby County Hospital, located on the workhouse grounds at Jackson Avenue, and the "County . . . — — Map (db m149046) HM
A. Skipwith Crevasse
Mile 499.4 AHP
When the levee at Skipwith Plantation broke in the flood of 1913, the water poured slowly through the break. Couriers on horseback were able to alert the residents of the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, and no . . . — — Map (db m116150) HM
The Spanish were the first Europeans to discover the Lower Mississippi, but 260 years of shifting international politics allowed them only occasional sovereignty over the area.
Hernando DeSoto's pioneering expedition stumbled on the Mississippi . . . — — Map (db m53733) HM
Although eastern Tennessee was settled in the 1770's, Western Tennessee was still wilderness when the state was admitted to the Union in 1796. Fort Pickering, a trading post of the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff was located near present day Memphis. At the . . . — — Map (db m82862) HM
Tennessee River
Originally one of the wildest rivers east of the Mississippi, the Tennessee has become a major waterway in the southeastern United States.
From headwaters above Knoxville, Tennessee the Tennessee first flows south on a . . . — — Map (db m114726) HM
The Threat of drastic change in the Lower Mississippi River channel at the Old River Junction has been the most serious problem in the modern history of the river. The Mississippi once curved westward in this area through Turnbill’s Bend. In 1831, . . . — — Map (db m116183) HM
Mile 90.2 AHP
Word of the treaty signed in December 1814, was slow to reach the countryside south of New Orleans, LA. Before dawn on January 8, 1815, General Andrew Jackson’s American troops were waiting for a British attack. Commanded . . . — — Map (db m114922) HM
Near this spot on May 22, 1917, a lynching party chained Ell Persons to a log, doused him in gasoline, and burned him alive. An estimated 5,000 spectators witnessed his death or viewed his remains soon afterward. Persons, a black woodcutter who . . . — — Map (db m103638) HM
Near this spot on the night of January 15, 1869, a group of masked horsemen lynched Wash Henley, a black Union army veteran, for running away with his white employer's teenage daughter. Henley, born about 1841 in Mississippi, had served as . . . — — Map (db m146805) HM
The Riverwalk is a portrait of Old Man River in the miniature-the winding 1.000-mile journey of the lower Mississippi reproduced in a one-half mile concrete sculpture. On a horizontal scale of 30 inches, or one step, to the mile, this flowing . . . — — Map (db m114725)
Vernon Omlie, a flight instructor during World War I, and Phoebe Fairgrave began barnstorming in the Midwest in 1921. They landed in Memphis a year later, married and opened the first commercial aviation company in Memphis. Mid-South Airways, Inc. . . . — — Map (db m89711) HM
This chimney swift tower celebrates the work of Ben and Lula Coffey who directed members of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, Boy Scouts, and others in banding 113,000 swifts from 1932 to 1959. Rediscovery of six of the bands in Peru helped to . . . — — Map (db m108330) HM
In March of 1892, business partners Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and William Henry Stewart were arrested for defending an attack on their store, The People's Grocery. The white competitor and the deputy sheriffs he hired were met with gunfire. . . . — — Map (db m141200) HM
A) Tiptonville, Tennessee
Mile 872.8 AHP
Its ridge-top location has kept Tiptonville dry through every flood since it was founded in the early 1800s. It was a flourishing little river town by the beginning of the Civil War, and served as . . . — — Map (db m114735) HM
A) Venice Louisiana
Mile 10.8 AHP
Venice lies at the end of the longest continuous levee line in the world, stretching 650 miles north to the Arkansas River. It is the last town accessible by a highway on the west bank of the . . . — — Map (db m114915) HM
A) Vicksburg
Mile 437.1 AHP
A flourishing river port in the antebellum of Vicksburg was the site of a major Turing point of the U. S. Civil War. The Mississippi later changed course and by-passed the valley, but a man-made canal has . . . — — Map (db m115168) HM
A. Waterproof, Louisiana
Mile 381.0 AHP
This small community was moved four times due to floods and the towns caving banks. The original location is now said to lie in the Mississippi River. During its third washout, a newspaper reported . . . — — Map (db m115163) HM
A) White Hall Plantation
Mile 166.0 AHP
One of the most effective Confederate gun batteries on the river was located near White Hall. When it was bombarded by the Union Ironclad, Monongahela in 1863, the vessel’s commander was . . . — — Map (db m114993) HM
A) Willow Cutoff
Mile 464.3 AHP
Before 1913, the lower Mississippi took a sharp turn east in this area, in a 14-mile long bend through what is now Lake Albemarle. During the 1913 flood, the river abandoned Albermarle Bend, taking a . . . — — Map (db m115521) HM
A) Young’s Point
Mile 443.5 AHP
Before he began digging at Milliken’s Bend, General U.S. Grant had tried to build a canal below Young’s Point. If successful, the project would have created an artificial cutoff and diverted the river . . . — — Map (db m115169) HM
Zion Cemetery, comprising 15 acres, was established in 1876 by the United Sons of Zion Association, a group of former slaves who responded to the need for a respectable burial site for African-Americans. It is the final resting place for many . . . — — Map (db m86450) HM
Developed as an exclusive neighborhood in 1903 by Brinkley Snowden and T. O. Vinton, Annesdale Park was the first subdivision in the South planned upon metropolitan lines. It was considered an important display of confidence in the city's future. . . . — — Map (db m83793) HM
On March 20, 1956 Elvis Presley and his parents,
Vernon and Gladys, moved into 1034 Audubon
Drive purchased with royalties from his first
million-dollar-selling record, “Heartbreak Hotel.” It
was the year that defined his career. The home . . . — — Map (db m200798) HM
A U.S. Army hospital on this site treated more than 44,000 combat veterans during World War II. Opened Jan. 23, 1943, it was named for the late Brig. Gen. James M. Kennedy, distinguished Army surgeon and veteran of both the Spanish-American War and . . . — — Map (db m84660) HM
Larry O. Finch, the pride of Memphis'Orange Mound community, was born February 16, 1951. The oldest child of Maple and James Finch, Larry honed his basketball skills on neighborhood playgrounds and quickly earned the nickname "Dirty Red," because of . . . — — Map (db m214295) HM
Larry was recruited by several colleges. But a scholarship offer from Memphis State University became controversial. His supporters urged him to leave Memphis because of racial tension following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But . . . — — Map (db m214303) HM
Named Oak Grove because of its original location in a grove of Oak trees, the history of the church began with a small group of "freed" blacks in 1863. Mary C. and Ella J. Williams of Williams plantation permitted the members to use a parcel of the . . . — — Map (db m88310) HM
Joseph Hanover
As floor leader in State House, led successful effort to enfranchise women by ratifying 19th amendment in 1920. Lived here. — — Map (db m214696) HM
African Americans formed the Rock of Ages Colored Methodist Episcopal congregation c. 1907. The congregation moved into a new church in 1956, when it became the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME). The name change signaled the . . . — — Map (db m149044) HM
Joseph B. Heiskell obtained a farm surrounding this location about 1867. He was Chairman of Code Commission of 1858 establishing the first official Code of Tennessee, member of the First Confederate Congress 1862, member of Convention of 1870 . . . — — Map (db m87996) HM
Clarence Saunders, whose self-service groceries were followed by modern supermarkets, started construction of this building for his home in 1922. It was incomplete when he lost an epic Stock Exchange battle. Developers who bought the grounds gave . . . — — Map (db m74831) HM
Side 1 On February 1, 1968, sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker took shelter from the rain inside their truck's garbage barrel because they had no raincoats. One block south of here, at the corner of Colonial and Verne, the . . . — — Map (db m83491) HM
On the tragic day of September 12, 1953, John Weatherall gave his life in dedication to his job at Peabody Elementary School. WWI Veteran, devoted family man and custodian of Peabody Elementary, John Weatherall became aware of a fire at the school . . . — — Map (db m84836) HM
Johnny Cash's First Performance
The singer-songwriter who became know as "The Man in Black," Johnny Cash launched his music career on this site in December 1954. Working as a door-to-door appliance salesman, Cash teamed up with guitarist . . . — — Map (db m102825) HM
Typifying the American Volunteer who fought Spain in Cuba, the Philippines, and Boxer Rebellion. Erected in 1956 with funds raised by Spanish War veterans of Memphis under the leadership of Fred Bauer, Commander. — — Map (db m86723) WM
Bridgewater School, formerly on this site, was founded in 1911 and exited continuously at this site until 1960. In 1921, with help from the community, the Shelby County school board, and the Rosenwald Fund, the Rosenwald school concept was . . . — — Map (db m118471) HM
On June 6, 1862 Memphis surrendered to Federal gunboats. The only resistance by citizens occurred here as a shot was fired at the soldiers hoisting the U.S. flag over the post office. — — Map (db m84464) HM
On May 1, 2 and 3, 1866, mobs of white men
led by law enforcement attacked black people
in the areas near South St. (aka Calhoun & G.E.
Patterson). By the end of the attack, the mobs
had killed an estimated 46 black people; raped
several . . . — — Map (db m117114) HM
Center Lane alley is one of the
best examples of what Memphis
looked like in the late 19th century.
Note the arched windows, the
metal shutters, and the decorative
cast iron columns, probably made
by Chickasaw Iron Works. — — Map (db m221384) HM
Running on the ballot as "A. Law" to disguise her gender, Alma Law won election in 1929 as a magistrate and member of the Shelby County Quarterly Courts by a vote of 990 to 45. The first woman to be elected the county's history, she was later . . . — — Map (db m204480) HM
The Cotton Growers Association Building, built in 1936, was used for years in advertisements for the Portland Cement Association as an example of the outstanding designs that could be achieved with concrete construction. — — Map (db m148957) HM
In 1887 the Bohlen-Huse Ice Co. struck, at a depth of 354 feet, artesian water of such purity and abundance it immediately became the city supply, one of the country's finest. In 1903 the wells became municipally owned. — — Map (db m148964) HM
Italian immigrant Anthony Sebastian Barboro operated a wholesale grocery in this building in the late 1800s. His company was still in business in 2003. — — Map (db m148962) HM
Baseball came to Memphis in 1885, but didn't last long because city law prevented games from being played on Sundays. Scores were transmitted to local cigar stores and hotel lobbies by telegraph. — — Map (db m148915) HM
392 Beale Avenue
"There were two types of
culture, I guess you could
say, on Beale Street.
There were the sinners
and there were the saved.
You had your professional
people, your doctors and
business folk. Then you
had those who . . . — — Map (db m107601) HM
First there was a slope of woodland that met the Mississippi River. Chickasaw Indians hunted there until the early 19th century. Then there was Beale Street. It began as the main road of South Memphis and by 1850, when that separate town was . . . — — Map (db m108221) HM
During the great wave of
immigration around the turn of
the century, Jews, Italians,
Greeks and Chinese came to
Beale Street to pursue their
fortunes. They established
pawnshops, clothing stores,
restaurants, produce stands, . . . — — Map (db m107598) HM
"Saturday night was the fabulous
night on Beale street. Our
parents kept the store opened
late. We were children; we used
to sit on little chairs outside the
store and watch. If we got sleepy,
they would put us to sleep on a
rack of . . . — — Map (db m107596) HM
Founded in the late 1840s by Rev. Morris Henderson and four other blacks, Beale Street Baptist Church is the oldest, continuous Negro congregation in Memphis. Withdrawing from the First Baptist Church, the founders and others met in an old . . . — — Map (db m148899) HM
Has been designated a Registered National Historic Landmark.
Under the provisions of the Historic Sites Act of August 21, 1935 this site possesses exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the history of the United States.
U.S. . . . — — Map (db m47904) HM
Benjamin F. Booth was one of Memphis' earliest and most distinguished African-American lawyers. Starting in 1886, he practiced law for more than 54 years. In 1905, he challenged Tennessee's law authorizing the segregation of black and white . . . — — Map (db m162725) HM
Brodnax Jewelers, the original occupant of the Brodnax Building, at one time sold more Rolex watches than any other retailer in the world. When this building was built in 1916 as their headquarters, their mail-order business claimed to sell more . . . — — Map (db m148949) HM
The "B-M-C" over the door of this 1910 building stood for the Business Men's Club, which became the Chamber of Commerce in 1913. — — Map (db m148948) HM
The oldest public building in Memphis and the first Episcopal Church in Shelby County. Organized August 6, 1832 by the Reverend Thomas Wright.
The church house started 1838 was consecrated May 12, 1844 by the Right Reverend James Hervey Otey, first . . . — — Map (db m32515) HM
From a station located on this site the night of Apr. 29. 1900, John Luther Jones, replacing the regularly detailed engineer, took out engine 382, pulling the Illinois Central “Cannonball.” Driving into a blocked switch at Vaughn, Miss., . . . — — Map (db m6862) HM
Charl Ormand Williams, an Arlington native, began teaching in a one-room school house in Shelby County when she was sixteen. She followed her sister, Mabel C. Williams, as Superintendent of Public Instruction for Shelby County, serving in that . . . — — Map (db m204746) HM
Chop Suey Café. Chop Suey is actually an American dish created by early Chinese immigrants in the 1800s for gold miners in California. It is a stir-fried mixture of vegetables and meat in a starchy soy sauce served over rice. An instant . . . — — Map (db m147552) HM
At this location Church Park and Auditorium was established in 1899 by Robert R. Church Sr., a Memphis business man and former slave, to provide recreational facilities for members of his race who had no other place to meet. Many famous Americans, . . . — — Map (db m82845) HM
Established in 1899, Church's park and auditorium was the only such facility in the United States owned entirely by a black man and conducted in the interest of black people.
Standard admission to the auditorium was 15¢ seating capacity was 2200, . . . — — Map (db m107386) HM
After the fall of Nashville Governor Isham Harris convened the Tennessee Legislature on this site February 20-March 20, 1862. The state archives were also stored here. — — Map (db m116300) HM
The Woolen Building was built with bricks made on-site in the 1840s. Federal troops later used its basement as a hospital during the Civil War. It is the oldest commercial building in Memphis. — — Map (db m116721) HM
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