You'll have to excuse my fascination with the Mississippi Delta region. Something about it just seems different, like they never made it past the Great Migration (circa 1940). There is one notable exception, Cleveland. Cleveland shows, more than any place else I've seen, how much a university (in this case, Delta State University) impacts the community. There may be other bright spots in the Delta (Greenwood, I'm told, is a bright spot too because of Viking Range being headquartered there; Robinsonville/Casino Center in Tunica County is also a bright spot, but ONLY if you consider that a community). The rest of the Delta (excluding DeSoto County which though it is technically a Delta county, doesn't really count as Delta; and Vicksburg which again doesn't really count as Delta, even though Warren County is a Delta County), is pretty blighted across the board. Having been now to a number of Delta cities/towns/villages, I can vouch for this (Clarksdale, Lyon, Ruleville, Marks, Mound Bayou, Yazoo City...the list goes on). One can see why so many folks had the blues there, and why it thus produced SO much good music.
Cleveland is a nice town, a bit of an anomaly in the Delta if you ask me.
However, the pictures I am posting now weren't taken in Cleveland, rather, they were taken somewhere between Cleveland and Marks. I believe they were mostly taken in Sunflower county, but it is likely that Tallahatchie or Quitman County are also where these pictures were taken.
I will try and describe these pictures the best I can remember them. You'll of course notice, they're all flat. The first one is of of sunflowers I belive (which leads me to believe it was in, you guessed it, Sunflower County). The middle two are of rice fields, I believe. The last one is of corn I believe.
Again, forgive the quality of the pictures, they were taken on my cell phone camera, and I was more focused on driving safely than framing
a picture well.
a picture well.
4 comments:
Flat!
Mom
That was how I had always envisioned Mississippi prior to ever having actually visited (my first time ever stepping foot in Mississippi was 2002). Compare those pictures, however, to this one from J.P. Coleman State Park in Tishomingo County (this is the NE'ern most county in the state, along Pickwick Lake and the Alabama state line).
JP Coleman State Park in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, near Iuka
It's not mountainous, to be sure, but it is as mountainous as Mississippi gets.
(This picture was found on the internet, and not taken by me. I haven't made it up to that area of the state yet).
Why don't Vicksburg and DeSoto County count as delta?
Well, DeSoto County is too rich and all of the cities are above the bluffs, and Vicksburg is at the VERY southern tip and is actually fairly hilly (remember, it was a stragegic point for the CSA during the war because it was on a cliff overlooking the MS River). Warren Co., sure, Vicksburg itself, not so much.
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