The Mississippi Delta 16: Highway 1

Highway 1 is the westernmost highway in the Mississippi Delta, running along the mainline levee in some places and connecting small farming towns as it traces its lonely path from a junction with US 49 south of Tunica through Greenville and south on towards Onward. This will be a short tour going from north to south.

It is quiet near Rena Lara, about an hour north of Greenville.  Even on a Saturday evening, there is little traffic.  Summer must be blazing hot.

The day had been gloomy and overcast, with snow flurries.  But just at dusk, the sun burst through and illuminated this odd little taco stand with an burst of  brilliance.  This was at the junction with Alligator-Hillhouse Road.

Proceed south, and you reach Beulah.  It is really quiet there, and this handsome St. Peters MB Church is on a side road.  The day I stopped, a gent told me the bell came from an old steamboat. This photograph is a scan of a Kodachrome 25 slide taken with a Leica camera.

We will stop in Benoit in a future article.  Just a bit north of Greenville is a cluster of houses called Lamont. This small church was on the east side of Hwy 1.

We will also leave Greenville for a future article.  Highway 1 leading south out of town is the "strip," with gasoline stations, shops, fast food poison emporiums, and miscellaneous buildings. There is really not much of interest to see except for the occasional shed.

About 10 miles south of Greenville, some deserted farm worker houses still stand. This one has the classic shotgun shack proportions.

This cottage must have been in use within a decade before I photographed it in 2005.  Was the child who owned this bicycle sad to lose it?

Finally, just off 1 on Hwy 14, west of Rolling Fork, is this old store. It has been empty since the mid-1990s, when  I first started driving this way. This temporarily ends our tour of the Delta. Greenville and Rolling Fork will be the subjects of future articles. (March 2014 update: the store is gone.)

The black and white photographs were scans of Kodak Panatomic-X film, shot through a Fuji GW690II 6x9 medium format camera.  I developed the Panatomic film in Agfa Rodinol developer at 1:50 dilution.  I processed the 2013 digital images with Photo Ninja software.

The Mississippi Delta 15: Sherard

Continuing our tour of the Mississippi Delta:  drive west out of Clarksdale along Highway 322 (also called Sherard Road), and at the junction of 322 and Highway 1 sits a cluster of houses, trailers, and an abandoned cotton gin.  This is (or was) Sherard.

On 322, here is another small church.  I assume the Pastor's home is attached to the back.

The gin is abandoned. That's sad because I am sure it was once one of the major sources of revenue in a small town.

The J.F. Sherard company's buildings were at the junction of Highways 322 and 1.  A Google search lists the company as a supplier of farm equipment with a current address in Clarksdale.  The buildings were sound, so probably had not been empty for too many years.

The tiny steel shed was rather neat.  It is hard to tell what it might have once housed.

All photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera with Panasonic Lumix 20 mm f/1.7 lens.

The Mississippi Delta 14: Hollandale

Travel north on Highway 61 from Rolling Fork, and the next "big" town that you reach is Hollandale. According to Wikipedia, the town was almost totally burned in 1904, so I assume most of the buildings you see in the downtown strip are newer.

City Drug on Hwy 12 (Washington Street), Hollandale

There was once a cheerful and prosperous commercial strip.  I left these photographs of the City Drug Store in color because the tones and textures were mellow in the evening light.

Hitghway 12 (Washington Street), Hollandale

The strip is mostly boarded up.  But you can see that the merchants were proud of their buildings in the early 20th century.  I met a couple who said they were trying to bring art and cultural tourists to Hollandale.  They were hoping to entice people on blues tours to stop. The big problem: lack of amenities like restaurants.

I am not sure how this big wood mansion was once used - a rooming house possibly?

Abandoned oil mill west of Hollandale

Abandoned oil mill, Hollandale

Just west of the railroad tracks, the oil mill is deserted.

Finally, here is a small church on Highway 61.  It is in nice condition, but much of the rest of town is forlorn.

This is a photograph of the "Y and M. V. R. R. Station, Hollandale, Miss. 4-30-27" from the Mississippi Department of archives and History.  A vast area of the Delta was flooded in 1927.

Modern photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera.  For the square frames, I processed the RAW files with Photo Ninja software.

The Mississippi Delta 13: Anguilla

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.

The Mississippi Delta 12: Clarksdale

This is essay no. 12 in my occasional series on the Mississippi Delta.

Clarksdale is the county seat of Coahoma County, the big city in the northern part of the Delta. In the early-mid-20th century, it was a bustling and prosperous agricultural, trade, railroad, and mercantile center. Feeding all this commerce were shops, office buildings, railroad repair shops, warehouses, and a thriving music culture. Many people consider Clarksdale to be the home of the Blues, and many famous Blues musicians either came from Clarksdale or got their start there.  Clarksdale had a thriving Jewish and Lebanese community in the early 20th century.

Today Clarksdale looks sad and beat-up, like many other Delta towns. The downtown commercial center is almost empty, shops are shuttered, and there is almost no traffic on a Saturday. I only spent part of a cold Saturday there, and surely missed many interesting places, but what I did see shows the town's rich cultural and commercial heritage.

First of all, where do you eat when you come to town on a cold, gloomy day, with wisps of snow in the air? You go for a big plate of ribs at Abe's Bar-B-Q at 606 North State Street. Abe's has been in business since 1924 and I suppose the tender ribs I ate have been smoking since then. Other than Abe's and a few other eateries, State Street looks rather forlorn.

Head north on Desoto Avenue and then turn left on 4th Street (also known as Martin Luther King Blvd.), and you head towards the Sunflower River and the old commercial heart of Clarksdale.

Unused railroad shed off Leflore Avenue

Turn right on Leflore Avenue, and you see a red railroad repair shed near the road. I can't tell if it is in use, but the dead locomotive has been sitting there a long time and the office is full of junk

Leflore Ave. has empty lots, abandoned houses, and gin bottles in the grass.

Yazoo Avenue, which is perpendicular to 4th Street, is pretty dilapidated in this area. Most of the shops are shuttered or imploding.

Proceed a couple of blocks closer to the river, and you reach Sunflower Avenue. At the corner was a former shop with the 45-degree corner facing the intersection. The former music center appears to be a lounge now.

Across the street is the historic Heavenly Rest cemetery. This is the resting place of merchants and prominent families - evidence of Clarksdale's wealthy past.

Turn the corner to 3rd Street and Delta Avenue, and you see some older commercial buildings with cheerful paint and some restoration. It is nice to see some degree of revival, but many of the storefronts here are still empty.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G1 camera and the superb Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 Lumix lens. I processed some of the RAW files with Photo Ninja software to render them as black and white.

For older posts on the Mississippi Delta, please click the links below:

• Duncan
• Alligator
• Hushpuckena
• Mound Bayou
• Boyle
• Leland
• Arcola
• Greenville
• Rolling Fork
• Yazoo City
• Mt. Holly

To see the funky Shack-Up Inn, please click this link.