Not much left: Chicot Junction, Arkansas

If you cross the Mississippi River on US 82 over the beautiful new bridge at Greenville heading west and turn south on Highway 65, you will soon drive by a group of abandoned houses in the woods. Oops, you just missed Chicot Junction. There is not much left of the town. The Arkansas Gazetteer states, "Chicot Junction is a populated place located in Chicot County at latitude 33.203 and longitude -91.26. The elevation is 128 feet. Chicot Junction appears on the Eudora North U.S. Geological Survey Map. Chicot County is in the Central Time Zone (UTC -6 hours)."

I am glad I drove by in March, before the spring growth season began. Otherwise, I suspect many of these houses would be completely buried in jungle.

These were once decent little homes.

 I found one mobile home that was occupied.

All the permanent cottages seemed to be deserted, but not in particularly bad condition. Very odd. What was the former business here that has dried up? 

I would like an old Chevrolet like this (but not this particular one).

Keep driving south and you pass through Eudora. It has more activity, but came across this abandoned store. It looked like the owners closed the doors one day and never came back. I feel sorry for places like this. It is the story of rural America in the early 21st century - small towns are simply closing up.

Photographs taken with a Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera, mostly with the 27mm f/2.8 Fuji lens. I processed the files with DxO filmpack 3 or PhotoNinja to simulate black and white film. In the Tri-X mode in DxO, I used the yellow filter, reduced the grain, and increased contrast a bit.

Off the main path: Union Avenue, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Because of Vicksburg's complicated loess topography, a number of roads wind along the ridges and drop into valleys. Some are dead-end and almost unknown except to local residents. Union Avenue is one of these. This is not the Union Ave. in the Vicksburg Military Park that tourists visit but rather a residential road that runs from Sherman Avenue to the edge of the Park.

I did not know Union Ave. was here until I saw the address of a house on the city's demolition list. The house, at 205, is beyond saving.

Neat, modest homes line the road as it proceeds south along the ridge. I saw this snow-covered Chevrolet Bel Aire and asked a fellow if I could take its portrait. He asked me if I wanted to buy it (tempting...).


Union Ave drops down into a hollow and parallels the Military Park. Oddly, this is Warren County and not City of Vicksburg. I was surprised to see a cluster of houses in the hollow. I recall seeing them years ago from the Park. The house in the photograph above, no. 710, is now deserted but when I saw it before, the resident there raised pigs.

The next house, 714, is also deserted. Neither look too bad. This is definitely a quiet, out-of-the-way place to live, another one of Vicksburg's hidden valleys.

Photographs taken with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera.