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| Kansas City Southern railroad and Front Street, Edwards, Mississippi |
Edwards, Mississippi, is a small town just south of Interstate 20, near a bend of the Big Black River. Before World War II, the Big Black was a Federal navigation project and was dredged and kept clear of snags, but now it is no longer maintained for commercial traffic. Like many small Mississippi towns, Edwards was prosperous up through the 1970s, but has slipped into a multi-decade decline and population loss. As usual, I do not understand the causes, considering the town is on the Kansas City Southern rail line between Vicksburg and Jackson and has easy road access to I-20. It is a mystery.
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Walker Evans (American, 1903 - 1975) Railroad Station, Edwards, Mississippi, 1936, Gelatin silver print 19.3 x 24.2 cm (7 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
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This is supposed to be a picture of Edwards taken in 1936 by Walker Edwards. Was it taken from the same bridge as my photograph no. 1 above? Was there once another bridge or crossover from which Evans took this frame? Where is the church on the left? I think the 1936 photograph may be mis-labeled and show another town. But it is not Bolton nor Bovina.
Front Street parallels the KCS tracks. The city hall is there, with the police department a short distance away.
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| 103 Magnolia St., Edwards, MS |
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| 205 Magnolia St., Edwards, MS |
Magnolia Street has some gracious old houses, demonstrating former wealth in the town.
This is the former Dodge automobile dealer, at the corner where old U.S. 80 makes a sharp right-angle turn. An old-timer in town told me that Edwards was prosperous enough in the 1970s to have two car dealerships. (
Update April 21, 2018: the old car shop is being demolished)
The high school gymnasium was designed by architect James Manly Spain in the Art Moderne style. It was completed just before we entered World War II in 1941 by the National Youth Administration (from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History). I have photographed this building before, and there has been no change in status.
The water tower is a prominent feature at the corner of U.S. 80 and Main Street. I was surprised it was over a century old. The big rivets are an example of early 20th century steel and iron construction. This was solid construction, intended to last the ages.
Main Street, which runs north-south, was once, well, the main street, with stores and small companies.
Both the east and west sides of South Main have stores with collapsed roofs. (
Update April 21, 2018: this southernmost building has been demolished)
On Main Street north of the tracks, the former Woodmen of America building was in poor condition in 2008. A former coworker from the Waterways Experiment Station had bought the historic building to preserve it, but the task may have been too much for her. It is now gone. Other historic buildings on Main Street were demolished in the mid-2000s, with the bricks salvaged for use in McMansion construction (recall, this was in the last gasp of the construction orgy before the 2007-2008 housing collapse). Much of Utica's former commercial core suffered the same fate.
Drive around the streets and the scene is pretty depressing. Joe's Lounge on Utica Street is a short distance from a collapsed store. (
Update April 21, 2018: the collapsed store is gone and the lot is empty.)
On Williams Drive, a store of modern construction, also closed.
Just off I-20, the fellow who restores old cars still has interesting Detroit iron in his yard. I am not sure if all these very cars are still there because the lot looks a bit more empty now. I have not seen any Edsels recently, but there may be some in there under the kudzu.
I took the 2017 photographs with my Yashica Electro 35CC compact rangefinder camera on Ilford Delta 100 film. There was rain and drizzle, and the contrast worked out perfectly with this film and development. I bought this little Yashica as a convenient walkabout camera for an upcoming trip to Nepal. The 35mm ƒ/1.8 Color Yashinon-DX lens, a Sonnar type, is very high quality. Praus Productions in Rochester, NY developed the film.
The 2008 frame of the old Chevrolets is from Kodak Panatomic-X film, taken with a Fujifilm GW690II medium format camera.
10 comments:
I hope that someone weighs in on what *did* happen to cause Edwards to implode. I lived there for a short time in the mid '80s and found it to be an eerie place.
I lived in Edwards, Ms from 1976-86. Started The World's Only Cactus Plantation which remained in business for at least 20 years after I sold.
Having lived the life of a gypsy, I grew roots in this little community which accepted me even though I was not "from" there. It breaks my heart to see it today.
My current project: saving and refurbishing the Edwards' water tower.
If anyone has turn of last century photos to help document, please contact me.
PS am also author of SUGARMAN (1900-69) inspired by true events. Local hero and legend.
I lived in Edwards between 1981 and 1996. I wonder if Edwards is dying off because it's midway between Vicksburg and "Great Jackson," including Clinton. People either moved west to Vicksburg or east to Jackson.
I grew up in Edwards
Thank you all for your feedback. I have been back through Edwards regularly but do not see many changes or activity. I'll post some more pictures in late-2022.
I saw this same KCS tracks and store fronts with parking on the right side looking up towards the bridge and the big house at 103 magnolia st in a movie. The bridge in the movie was not the bridge in the above picture however. Looking for evidence I found pictures of the bridge in the movie. It appears the bridge in the above picture is newly-ish constructed, replacing the former. I assume this information isn’t a revelation to many but i it was interesting to me to see it in the movie and be interested enough that I ended up on this blog. J mink.
Ps. Just in case , the movie in which the above appears is Oh Brother Where Art Thou, in the last scene of the film. Thank you for the blog and those who contribute
Hi Anonymous, you are right. This is a modern bridge. The older one was timber, but I do not have any photographs of it.
Edwards is my hometown. I was born in the Mercy Hospital in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1944.
My family lived in rural Hinds County until a propane installation accident forced us to move to Edwards in 1955. During the years that highway 80 was routed through Edwards, and the cotton plantations were still using "hands" to pick cotton, Edwards, Mississippi was a bustling community . The combination of mechanical cotton pickers, and the by-pass of Edwards by I-20, caused the community to decline. The final "nail in the coffin" was the development of the commodity welfare system, which then became "entitlements "During the bustling economy, Edwards had a White Administration, run by businessmen and landowners. As the economy began to fail, the Administration became controlled by the Black population, who were dependent upon government benefit programs and "entitlements ". The decay of small towns in the South and other areas of rural America can be blamed on the initiative known as "the Great Society" , which was initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid 1960's.
I guess that we should blame the decay upon ourselves for allowing our American society to fail, and our system of Capitalism to decline, and move towards Socialism.
Hi Anonymous, thanks for writing. I have read that the shift to mechanized farm production had a lot to do with the decline of these small towns. That coincided with increasing urbanization. It is awful; I have seen these semi-forgotten and crumbling towns throughout the USA.
I moved to Edwards in 1960 a thriving busy little town, until I-20 came and bypassed it.
The only industry of any size was Adams egg farm-now Cal-Maine. Most of the young folks left to get an education an never came back.
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