The Mississippi Delta 38b: Hwy 49W and the Belzoni area (XPan 12)

Dear Readers, let's take another look at the Mississippi Delta with the panoramic Hasselblad XPan camera. Please type XPan in the search box to see older articles from Vicksburg, the Delta, Jackson, and Louisiana.

After my drive north on Highway US 49E to the little town of Sidon, I headed west through flat and lonely farm fields on MS 511 (Phillipston Road) and MS 7, finally reaching Morgan City on US49W. Long-term readers may remember that I looked at Morgan City in the Mississippi Delta 23. I also explored junk in the woods in 2015. 

1st Avenue, Morgan City (30mm ƒ/5.6 lens)

This former commercial block has only one building with an intact roof. The dudes were hanging out in the shade and drinking.

Fixer-upper barn, Swiftown (45mm, yellow filter)

Gin, Swiftown (90mm ƒ/4 lens)

Swiftown is not really a town, just an unincorporated community in Leflore County about 7 miles south of Morgan City. The barn next to a trailer was interesting. The cotton gin looks unused.

Head south about 10 miles and you reach Belzoni. 

Junction of MLK Jr. Drive and Church Street, Belzoni

My friend, who grew up in Belzoni, told me that these Quanset huts were restaurants owned by a local Italian family, the Mechattos. They were immigrants from Sicily. My friend's grandmother called them "The Hut." They made wonderful homemade salad dressing. One waitress was called Tootsie. My friend did not know when the family left or stopped operating the restaurant. 

China Street, Belzoni

Much of Belzoni is pretty rough today. And it may no longer be the Catfish Capital of the World. Please click the link for some 2021 photographs of Belzoni.

Thank you all for riding along in the Mississippi Delta.

From the archives: Country Stores, Roosters, and other Oddities

Dear Readers, I recently found in my too-many boxes a plastic slide holder with some slides that I sent as a submission to Leica Fotografie International. They never published my essay and returned my slides, but I never got around to filing them away. I decided to scan them first and show you some samples. Store fronts and home-made signs have always interested me. They demonstrate merchants advertising their wares and trying to attract customers, a form of folk-art. So here we go, in chronological order, but no specific geographical order.

Front Street, Morgan City, Louisiana (Leica IIIC, 5cm f/2.0 Summitar lens)

Front Street, Morgan City, Louisiana (Leica IIIC, 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens)

In the early 1980s, I worked for a marine geotechnical company. We had steamed (dieseled) in to Morgan City after a couple of weeks offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. I had never been to Morgan City before and found the floodwall a convenient viewpoint of the old downtown.

Jerry's, Corpus Christi, Texas (Rollei 35S, 40mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar lens)

A relative lived in Corpus Christi. This pottery company offered a wealth of garden art. I should have bought that pink donkey, or maybe the leopard.

Galveston, Texas (Leica M3, 50mm ƒ/2.8 Elmar-M lens)

Hurricane Alicia was a powerful hurricane that caused major damage in coastal Texas in August of 1983. The eye passed directly over Houston. We drove to Galveston to see what had happened. Many cottages on the beaches had been damaged, but others, like this beach shop, were intact.

Bremond, Texas (Rollei 35S, 40mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar lens)

Bremond was a typical agricultural/cattle town northwest of Houston. Even in the 1980s, many of these small towns were quiet, with closed stores along the main strips. That is when I first became interested in photographing urban decay. Bremond looked like it was doing a bit better than many other Texas towns, but I have no idea of its status now.

Mendenhall, Mississippi (Olympus OM1 camera, 35mm ƒ/2.8 shift lens)

In 1990, on my way to Mobile, I decided to stop in Mendenhall and look around. There was an old theater/cinema in reasonably sound condition near the courthouse. Do any readers know if the theater is still existent? (Update: the building burned down.)

Rooster-mobile, Mary Esther, Florida (Olympus OM1, 35mm ƒ/2.8 shift lens)

Mary Esther, Florida, had a rooster car, as well as some pig- and cow-mobiles. And the rooster was built onto an old Chevrolet El Camino. Maybe I should have offered to buy it and drive it home to Vicksburg. El Caminos now fetch serious prices (and a rooster may enhance the value).

Crossroads store, Reganton, Mississippi (Leica, 50mm ƒ/2.8 Elmar-M lens)

The venerable Crossroads store is on Old Port Gibson Road in Reganton, near the Big Black River, about 20 miles south of Vicksburg. I have visited on and off over the years, most recently in 2018.

Biloxi, Mississippi (Leica M3, 50mm lens)

Before Hurricane Katrina, US 90 along the Mississippi Gulf coast featured many beachy shops, including this pink palace. But I prefer the gorilla on Alberti's Italian Restaurant. I wonder if he swam to safety in Katrina?

Snuffy Smith's, Wilmer, Alabama (Leica M3, 50mm lens)

Snuffy Smith's antiques and gasoline was a famous landmark on Moffett Road in Wilmer, Alabama. Classic folk art - I stopped several times to photograph. But the last time I drove through Wilmer, I did not see Snuffy's. Is it gone, or did I just drive by too quickly?

Original Oyster House, Gulf Shores, Alabama (Leica 50mm lens)

The Original Oyster House, as I recall, had excellent seafood (and alligator, if you were interested), along with condiments from Greece. I assume the owners were Greek, which usually bodes well for a restaurant. Is this still existent?

Santa in Seminary (Nikon F3, 50mm ƒ/1.8 Nikkor lens)

Finally, the well-traveled Santa Claus comes to Seminary, Mississippi, via tractor. Good choice in a farming community.

Madison St. (Old Hwy 80), Bolton, Mississippi (Leica M3, Kodachrome film)

Well, Santa can relax with a brew or a Bud at Mack's Cafe in Bolton.

This is the end of our short random tour of southern stores, rooster-mobiles, and other oddities. All photographs were from Kodachrome film, mostly K25. Using Kodachrome was a bit clumsy because you needed to mail the exposed film to one of the few processing laboratories in the United States that could handle the highly specialized processing and dye chemicals. The ISO 25 emulsion was unsurpassed in grain size and resolution. Also, Kodachrome had excellent archival properties when stored in the dark in reasonable climate control. As you can see, the examples above scanned well and the colors are still vibrant.

Sadly, Kodachrome manufacture ended in 2009, after 7 (seven) decades of production. The last processing was in December of 2010 at Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas. The movie, "Kodachrome," is about this last processing and a road trip to Parsons. In the poster, you can see that Ed Harris is wearing a Leica.

The Mississippi Delta 23: Morgan City

Morgan City is a small farming town in Leflore County on Hwy. 7 southwest of Greenwood. (Note, this is a small town in Mississippi, not the much larger city of the same name on the Atchafalaya River in southern Louisiana.)

The main road through town, Hwy. 7, has an agricultural complex, but I could not tell if it was in operation.

The local dudes were hanging around near the Morgan store and having a good old time with plenty of beer. Note how this early 20th century brick building has a 45° corner to provide access from both streets.

Across Hwy. 7, Diggs Street is a community of mobile homes with a couple of ranch-style houses.

There is not much to the town. Several houses look like this.

The Mount Zion Church is north of Morgan City, at the junction of Hwy. 7 and 511 in Sheppardtown.

South of Morgan city, in Swiftown, the Sunflower River was in flood and coursing through the woods. It was fun to stand on the bridge and watch the water flow and bubble beneath me.

I took these photographs with my Fuji GW690II 6×9 camera (medium format, known as the "Texas Leica") with its 90mm f/3.5 Fujinon lens on the classic Kodak Panatomic-X film (long discontinued). I wrote about Panatomic-X in an earlier post (click the link).

High Water along the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers, May 2011

As I described in the previous article, the Atchafalaya River carries 30 percent of the combined flow of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. In times of flood, more than 30 percent may have to be diverted to prevent levees being overtopped in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.


One of the towns subject to high water is Melville, Louisiana. The first photograph shows the landing for the former Melville-Pointe Coupee ferry service, which permanently closed in December 2010. Dump trucks were rumbling past to a site just south of the landing, where the levee was being elevated. The second photograph shows how high the water was under the railroad bridge, 14 May 2011.


Morgan City is a historic town near the Gulf of Mexico mouth of the Atchafalaya. Having suffered from many floods in the past, the Corps of Engineers built a levee and floodwall system around the town in 1926. The concrete floodwall is a popular tourist attraction because you can look down on the Atchafalaya on one side and down on the historic city on the other. Normally there are a boardwalk and docks on the river side, but this time, the river was well above the base of the floodwall (15 May). The bridge in the background is US 90


Finally, New Orleans. The levees have been reinforced since Hurricane Katrina and raised in some areas. Along the French Quarter, the levees were well above the water level, even under conditions of the 2011 flood. For tourists, it was a great opportunity to be photographed next to Ol' Man River (or The Big Muddy).

(Photographs taken with an Olympus E-330 camera and Olympus 14-54mm f/2.8 lens)