Country store, Canada Cross Road, Edwards, Mississippi

Country stores in Edwards, Mississippi.  Map drawn with ESRI ArcMap software.

Regular readers may remember when I wrote about the now-closed Newman Plantation store, at the corner of Newman and Canada Cross Roads, in Edwards, Mississippi.

Newman Plantation store, Canada Cross Road, Edwards. Photograph processed with PhotoNinja software.

Here is another view of the Newman store, with its deep overhang to protect motorists in the old days when they were having their cars fueled or serviced (remember when attendants in pressed uniforms filled the gasoline, washed windows, and checked oil?). A friend from Utica remembered that the store was open in the early 1970s.

Abandoned store or farm shop, Canada cross Road, Edwards, Mississippi

Just to the west on Canada Cross Road is another abandoned store or farm supply warehouse. My friend remembers his grandmother telling him that this was the original Newman store, while the white building on the corner was the new store (new meaning from the 1930s). The mailbox shows 1940, but that applies to the house across the street.

In the woods behind are some old farm sheds.  They were once next to to cleared fields, but the trees have been growing here for decades. Over time, many farms in Mississippi have been abandoned, and the land is returning to timber.

Some farm implements are lying in the leaves - isn't the equipment worth repairing or selling for scrap?

My favorite subject matter: old junk in sheds or buildings. Compared to film, digital cameras are so easy to use in low-light conditions, and there is minimal color shift with long exposures. But always use a tripod.

This area once had many small country stores.  The Betigheimer store is now gone.  The Yates store is still standing, but unused. A former store in Farnham, Virginia, is now privately owned.  Click the names for the links to the articles.

Photographs taken with a Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera with the 27mm lens.  I rented it for a weekend and was very impressed with the resolution and color quality. All photographs tripod-mounted.

Newman Plantation Store, Edwards, Mississippi

Here is another old-fashioned country store near Utica and Edwards, Mississippi: the former Newman Plantation store.  It is at the corner of Newman and Canada Cross Roads.

Map of Edwards and vicinity, with other historic stores shown (from ESRI ArcMap software)

I have little any information about the store's history.  Unlike the nearby Yates store, no one came by to chat on this quiet Sunday afternoon.  The store had the long overhang typical of early gasoline stations.  According to Tidbits and Treasures, written by Mary Landin, "Newman  Plantation covered a large area around Newman, which is the crossroads of two historic county roads that did not used to have names. No Newmans ever  lived on what is now Newman Road, because their homes face what is now  called Canada Cross Roads. When the county named them, they named the one that the Newmans thought should have been named Newman Road, Canada Cross  Roads, which is a misnomer in itself, and named the road that went to Edwards  from Newman, Newman Road."  Ms. Landin is a local historian and advocate of small-town living.

The store is locked and protected with bars, but I was able to take one photograph through the dusty glass.

Interior of abandoned Newman country store

Look at the old cash register on the shelf in the lower left. And is that a hot water radiator on the far wall?

I took these photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 camera with 9-18mm Panasonic lens or a 1949-vintage Leitz 5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens. The Summitar lens has been in the family since my dad bought it new.

Detroit Iron in Edwards, Mississippi

Some of you readers may remember that in January of 2010, I posted photographs of a yard in Raymond filled with Volkswagen Beetles. Well here is the place where old American cars come to rest. It is in Edwards on the frontage road north of I-20 (also labeled Old Hwy 80 on Google maps). You can see the yard from the interstate, but it's worth a diversion to see the treasures closer-up.

I do not know who owns the yard, but he (or she) has a regular flux of vehicles in varying stages of disrepair. The ones in theses photographs are at the edge of the property next to the frontage road. They have have not moved in a long time and may be too far gone to restore (except possibly for someone who really really likes to restore cars).

One forgets how huge these 1950s and 1960s cars were. The sheet metal goes on and on, and they were heavy! The two cars above are the third generation Chevrolet Bel Air from 1957-1958. I remember when I first saw them and thought the four lights on each side were so distinctive.

Next we come to the Edsels, one of the more infamous marketing failures of the American car industry. But now they are collector's items and command serious money if in good condition. I remember a family friend owned an Edsel. He always had trendy new things. His car had the bizarre push-button Teletouch transmission shifting system, with the buttons in the center of the steering wheel hub. The buttons were projecting chrome squares - not much concern for safety in those days. According to Wikipedia®, the Teletouch pushbutton selector proved troublesome because the steering wheel hub, where the pushbuttons were located, was the traditional location of the horn button. Edsel had an electro-hydraulic inhibitor switch mechanism to prevent panic or erroneous gear-switching, but it was still a goofy design.


Most people remember the weird styling, especially the trademark horsecollar or toilet seat grille, which was unique in that era. Some people said it looked like a vagina. Nevertheless, the car still did not sell well.

All photographs taken with an Olympus E-330 camera. The two black and white frames were created in-camera with the monochrome option.

The Bonner Campbell Institute, Edwards, Mississippi

The Bonner Campbell Institute, formerly the Southern Christian Institute, sits on a bucolic piece of property off Hwy 80 west of Edwards, Mississippi. The Preservation in Mississippi blog recently presented an excellent historical summary on the Institute:
http://misspreservation.com/2010/12/01/abandoned-mississippi-southern-christian-institute/

The essay inspired me to return and look around the site. I had driven past on Hwy 80 many times before, but the gate was always closed and I never saw any activity there. But a couple of Sundays ago, the gate was open, the light was mellow, and it seemed like a good afternoon to explore.


The land is beautiful. Hawks and turkey vultures soar overhead, song birds twitter in the trees, the oaks are full and luxurious. Someone mows the grass, but the place still has a "Land that Time Forgot" feel to it. As E.L. Malveney wrote, "The campus again saw new life when it became Bonner Campbell School of Religion, an arm of the A.M.E. denomination, in 1971. Used mainly for church retreats, but also more regularly as a Head Start center until around 2000, the owners have struggled in recent years to keep the campus up." Sadly, this last sentence says it all. The buildings, which look reasonably intact from a distance, are all suffering for decay, storm damage, and some degree of vandalism.


The first structure you come to is a handsome 2-story pillared building with wrap-around porches. This was Smith Hall, a girl's dormitory. Part of the roof on the north side has collapsed and the porches are rotting. (Update January 2018: this building no longer exists.)



The inside was elegant in its day. Look at this handsome room with multi-paneled pine doors, but it does feature the infamous institutional lime green paint.


Allison Hall was the kitchen and cafeteria complex. An older 2-story building is to the rear, with a newer 1-floor cafeteria in front. Both were faced with concrete blocks molded to look like cut stone.


Here, too, some pretty serious decay is underway. A tree limb crashed through the roof of the cafeteria and the interior is open to rain and the elements.


I ventured inside and saw typical institutional halls and toilets. But these ones were blue, not the sickening green you see in most institutions.


The building in the back contained living quarters, I presume for the cook staff. I've seen much worse, making me think these building were intact and occupied less than 10 years ago.


Proceeding south (further away from Hwy 80), you come to the brick 1926-vintage Administration Building. Many of the windows have been broken and partly fixed with wood panels. The few interior rooms I could see were just like early 20th century schoolrooms you can see around the country. A couple of administration-looking offices were sided with nasty cheap dark paneling. As you can see from the plaque, funds for the college came from around the country.

The building furthest south is Belding Hall, the former boys' dormitory (1935-vintage). It looked like it was in the best condition of the historic buildings, but I was unable to see inside.

I don't know what to say. It's a beautiful site. But who could afford to restore the buildings? Most modern conference centers want contemporary energy-efficient climate-controlled buildings.

All photographs taken with a Sony DSC-R1 camera, tripod-mounted. I also used traditional Panatomic-X black and white film in a Fuji 6x9 camera but have not processed the film yet. For the monochrome frames above, I processed the Sony RAW files in Phase One's Capture One 4 software, which does a very nice job in taming high contrast and recovering highlights. I then resized, sharpened, and converted to sepia with ACDSee ProV2.5 software.