Anguilla is a cluster of houses and some trees on Highway 61 (the Blues Highway) just a couple of miles north of Rolling Fork, Mississippi. South of town are some farm road that intersect 61, and on one one of these, Southdale Road, stands a classic rural wooden church.
The Southdale Church is unused now but is still in decent condition. There are dozens of churches like this scattered across the Delta.
Turn around and face north, and you can see why the Delta was so famous for its rich soil. And most of it is a flat, with only a few Indian mounds and some natural river levees to break the horizon.
A few years ago, I photographed this deserted farm workers' house somewhere in Anguilla, but I can't recall the exact location. Many of these isolated houses are now empty and slowly crumbling and decaying. A legacy of our past is disappearing.
About 4 miles north of Anguilla, you reach the small town of Nitta Yuma. Here is another country church, perched at the edge of the fields. Nitta Yuma was once much more populated, but now has very few residents.
This formerly magnificent mansion in Nitta Yuma belonged to the Crump family. Nellie Crump came from good stock and was a regular guest of the President, staying in Blair House. Nellie's mansion had electricity before the White House did. After Nellie died, two descendants dug up floors and tore out parts of walls, looking for gold that was purported to be hidden somewhere. The house has been crumbling steadily over the decades. This is how we lose our architectural heritage.
2013 photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 camera with 14-45 mm lens, tripod-mounted. The 2008 photographs were from a Olympus E-330 digital camera.
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