We decided to go to some of the smaller National Park Service units on our way north from NOLA.
First stop was Natchez NHP and the Melrose estate. This NHP preserves a long history. Originally colonizers kicked out the Indigenous People who lived here, and enslaved some of them. They then sold the land to anyone who wanted to come buy it. A family came and settled and built the Melrose Estate which became a large plantation enslaving many people including Black and Indigenous people. Then came civil war. Fort Rosalie was built along the river to serve as a stronghold for Confederate soldiers. (This summary is super condensed and does not represent anywhere close to the full history here.)
Next stop was Vicksburg. Vicksburg main interest point is the extensive Civil War battlefield that is still being preserved. The park film was really well done and laid out the timeline of the Civil war battles that happened here in a way that was easy to follow. All along the driving tour road are markers showing where the different Union and Confederate lines were. The NPS app has a nice audio tour to go along with the driving tour. There are still trenches all around where armies dug up the ground to try and hide better. The USS Cairo was torpedoed in the Yazoo River nearby and sunk by the Confederacy. The ship was dug up from the river bottom in the 1960s and moved on land to become a museum. The ship itself is really neat to look at and admire the technology from the time. The indoor museum was closed the day we came but apparently it has lots of artifacts from the ship itself like uniforms, guns, etc that sank along with the ship.
Our last stop was Poverty Point NHP and UNESCO World Heritage site. Poverty Point has an excellent park video explaining why this area is significant. The society that lived in this area 3400 years ago built an amazing network of earthworks mounds and trenches. Tons of historical artifacts have been found around the site including stones/rocks from hundreds of miles away up and down the Mississippi River. The biggest mound is the youngest mound but even that one was built around 2000 yrs ago.
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