(theme song) - [Walt] Coming up on  Mississippi Roads, we visit the Mississippi River Museum, check in on the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library, and cycle the Natchez Trace.

All that coming up now on  Mississippi Roads.

♪ Down Mississippi Roads... ♪ ♪  Mississippi Roads.

♪ - Hi, welcome to   Mississippi Roads.

I'm Walt Grayson.

Our show,  Mississippi Roads, carries you to places in Mississippi you may have never visited before.

And we also show you some things you can explore while you're there.

And this episode is no different.

We're at one of the most iconic places in the state.

This is the Windsor Ruins in Claiborne County.

Now, when the old house was finished in 1861, it was said to be the largest house in Mississippi, maybe even the South, with 17,000 square feet under roof in the middle of a 2600 acre cotton plantation.

Mark Twain is said to have climbed to the observatory level up on the top of Windsor, and over in the west, in the distance, he could see the Mississippi River out there.

Well, you can't see the river from here anymore, but the Mississippi River is another great place to discover, and the best place to start doing that is the destination of our first story.

That's the Mississippi River Museum in Vicksburg.

(Country music) ♪ Gonna take me down to the river, Lord.

♪ ♪ Gonna take me down today.

♪ ♪ Gonna take me down to the river, Lord.

♪ ♪ Gonna get on my knees and pray.

♪ - This is a Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum.

We opened in 2012.

Jesse Brent, the namesake of the museum, he was a Corps of Engineers employee when he started his career out, left the corps, and essentially started the river industry on the Lower Mississippi River.

He was credited for starting several towing companies, shipbuilding companies, and so the museum was named after him.

- The museum is the only U.S. Army Corps of Engineers museum centered along the Mississippi River that highlights all the work that we have done in this region.

The museum provides a range of exhibits and activities for visitors of all ages to enjoy, but it also gives visitors an opportunity to walk through how the river and life along the river has changed throughout time.

- Over the centuries, the Mississippi River has changed its course countless times, which made it very difficult for commerce, industry to continue to use it and move goods and services up and down the country from the headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

The city of Vicksburg has been a critical point in the management of the Mississippi River.

And as a result of that, we do have a large engineer presence here.

There are more engineers per capita in the city of Vicksburg than any other city in the nation, if you can believe that.

- Vicksburg has been such a key location throughout history, and this area, the whole region.

But Vicksburg is specifically important for the Corps of Engineers because it's really a central location along the Lower Mississippi River, and that's why the Corps of Engineers has so many offices located here in Vicksburg.

We've got the Mississippi Valley Division, the Engineering Research and Development Center, and the Vicksburg District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office.

So we have three fairly large entities here in Mississippi, so it seems like an ideal place for us to provide visitors traveling throughout the region to come here and learn more about the Mississippi River and how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked with the Mississippi River Commission.

- The museum is beneficial because it allows us to educate the public on the importance of the Corps of Engineers' mission managing the Mississippi River, and it also highlights the challenges that we face and overcome in doing that.

Not only that, there's some very interesting and interactive, and educational exhibits that any visitors will enjoy, regardless of their age or their background.

- The most popular part of the museum is the Motor Vessel Mississippi IV, because it's an interactive exhibit that the public is allowed to come and walk through.

There's four levels of the boat.

Everybody gets the chance to walk through it and get a hands-on view of day-to-day life on the vessel.

- We are thrilled to have the Motor Vessel Mississippi IV here as part of the museum's features, because it really gives visitors an opportunity to come in and get a sense of, first off, what the Mississippi River Commission did, because they used the vessel for 30 years to conduct public meetings along the Mississippi River.

And that was really an opportunity for the public to come on board the vessel and have their voice heard.

So that's one part of what the vessel did.

The second part of it is that it was in operation in many circumstances moving matt, articulating concrete mattress, which we've got an exhibit here at the museum that highlights the matt sinking units.

The matt sinking unit places articulated concrete mattress along the banks of the Mississippi River to prevent the Mississippi River from meandering.

And so the Motor Vessel Mississippi IV, was used to push that matt down the river.

So visitors get an opportunity to really see a vessel that was used in operation to help manage the river.

- Visitors can go in, access 90%, 95% of the vessel, from the pilot house to the engine room, the quarters to the galley.

And that's pretty interesting experience for all.

And then we've got the 1,500 gallon aquarium, which allows visitors to get an up close and personal look at some of the fish species that we have here in the Lower Mississippi River.

And then there's classrooms and conference rooms available for local use, which we highly encourage.

It's just a great facility for the public to take advantage of and enjoy, and we're really proud of it.

- So the Mississippi River is really the lifeblood of the economy, and this museum really summarizes, not only life along the Mississippi River and how it's developed over time, but it highlights how the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has been so influential in maintaining this amazing body of water.

- The old home here at the Windsor Plantation burned in 1890, and about the only thing that was left behind is, well, really more or less what you see here today.

Just the 29, 45 foot columns.

And actually, we've lost some of them over time due to weathering and erosion.

Fortunately, the Department of Archives and History has an ongoing preservation program here to keep us from losing any more of Windsor.

In our next story, we visit another preservation project of sorts.

It's in Biloxi at the old Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library.

(thoughtful guitar music) - Beauvoir is the last home of President Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy in 1861-1865, and former senator from Mississippi, Secretary of War.

He lived here from 1877 until his death in 1889.

I would say 90% of what you see in the house was here when Jefferson Davis lived here.

I think Beauvoir had been through 20-something hurricanes since it's been here, but nothing like Katrina.

- I came down here at Beauvoir Road, turned around a corner, stopped, and walked onto the property, and I saw the house.

And I thought, this is really, really bad.

But I think this can be fixed.

It looked like three boxes, almost like cereal boxes or cracker boxes is what it reminded me of because it had stripped all of the outside.

It stripped the porch off, the front third of the roof had collapsed, and that was looking at it from the front.

I had walked around it, and the pieces of the house, pieces of the museum, pieces of other people's property was all over, and things that the tide had washed in.

It looked like a nuclear weapon went off.

It was what I thought.

It was pretty bad.

- When I saw the house was here, it came up in the house, I knew in my mind it could be restored.

I didn't know how, didn’t know where the money would come from, but as we went along, and of course talked to FEMA and MEMA, we found out with Beauvoir being a national historic landmark, qualified us for federal funding.

And thank goodness for that.

- You just start going through and picking things up, and if it's trash, you put it in one pile.

And then you search through that trash with a fine-toothed comb.

Everything you pick up, you search through with a fine-toothed comb.

Branches, bushes, boxes, pieces of walls, bricks, everything, you have to go through every single piece that you pick up off of the ground.

All of it, because that's where you find your artifacts at.

- I mean, I would come down.

A lot of other people would look for artifacts and all sorts of things.

But when you left, you felt like you hadn’t done anything.

It was just mind boggling to the debris.

The Presidential Library that we opened in 1998, the first floor was gone.

The second floor intact.

We could have restored that library, but after they drew the flood line for flood zone, it went right through the middle of that library, so it had to be demolished and build the Presidential Library that you see over there today.

- As you go through, you will see items from Jefferson Davis’ early military career.

The coat that he was wearing when he was captured by the Union forces in Georgia.

The press at the time said he was wearing a dress and women's clothes when it was just a raglan overcoat.

That's been restored and is on display.

I have his funeral catafalque, which is a funeral carriage pretty much only used by heads of state.

That is here upstairs.

I have his daughter Winnie’s boat that is out on display and in the Confederate Soldiers’ Gallery, I have letters from Confederate soldiers.

I've got a multitude of swords.

I've got several rare low production run Springfield rifles that are out.

And then I have the library, which I've got 58,000 volumes in the library.

I've got a large reading room and then I have an archive vault for researchers, and I have a lot of people come down here to do research.

So if you're seriously into history and you want to come down here and learn some more, then this is definitely the place you need to come to.

- In our cemetery here at Beauvoir, there's 784 Confederate veterans, their wives and their widows.

I’ve started to realize that all the Confederate veterans that are buried in the cemetery, they were teenagers when they fought during the War.

The history of the Confederacy, there's always something new to learn.

Always.

- It's a window back into the past.

It's a window back into American History, as well as Mississippi History.

And even down the little small things is how people live their lives.

Things that we take for granted today.

- I tell you, if you could have seen the Coast and Beauvoir after the hurricane, how depressing that was, and to see what it looks like today, it's just a miracle.

It makes me feel real proud of everybody involved and the work that was done here by everybody.

- The Natchez Trace has always seen its share of visitors, from early Native American foot traffic all the way up to the modern-day automobile.

But in our next story, we see the Natchez Trace from a different viewpoint: from the seat of a bicycle.

(bluegrass music) - You could call me a touring cyclist or an adventure cyclist.

I try to seek out back roads and just interesting routes that, you know, let me see the countryside.

The Natchez Trace is great from a cycling standpoint, because it's very smooth pavement.

It's just a straight shot.

I don't have to stop and go.

There are no intersections to deal with, no stop signs.

It goes all the way from near Nashville, down to Natchez, Mississippi.

You never are sure exactly what you're going to run into, what kind of weather you're going to put up with.

You know, hope for the best, but you prepare for the worst.

And that's part of the fun of it.

(slow rock music) The Natchez Trace originally was a hunting route.

The Trace refers to the trace of the bison, or the uh.... the poop, if you will?

The bison would follow a relatively high route going from the Coast up to the, I guess, foothills of the Appalachians near Nashville.

And the natives would follow this route as part of their hunting route.

When white settlers came along, they used these already-established routes as a trade route.

They could take things down the Mississippi and then go by land back up the Natchez Trace.

Yeah, I try to keep the history in mind along the way.

Presently, we're at Witch Dance campsite.

It’s a bicycle-only campsite.

Historically, apparently, the site of witch ceremonies, at least by legend.

(chuckles) Along the way, there's a few cycling-only campsites, which is really neat to not have to share your campsite with a massive land yacht.

It's a little quieter that way.

I see people come from all over the country to ride the Natchez Trace.

As far as Washington, Colorado, folks just going around the country and riding all of the big adventure cycling routes.

- I'm from upstate New York, Gloversville, New York, and with a buddy of mine, we started riding in Chicago, Illinois, and we're finishing up in New Orleans, so we're just passing through here.

It's a tranquil stretch of road.

It's in very good shape.

It's just great not seeing all the development and power lines always run perpendicular.

They don't run parallel to the road.

There's no billboards.

There's no franchises.

Houses are even obscured from view.

So yeah, it's been beautiful.

Just a great time of year with wildflowers blooming up all along the way.

- I'm from Maryland.

I just came down here to tour for a little while.

This is my second time down here.

Last time, I did the northern section, and this time I started in Tupelo.

I'm going to go down to Natchez and then turn around and ride back again.

It's a nice ride down here, and a little warmer here than Maryland right now.

So for me, it's therapy, you know.

Sometimes, you know, any traveling, you know, you can look back on and say it was great, but there's hard parts and there's easy parts and sometimes you wonder why you're doing it, and that's a reward I can pretty much count on, no matter how a trip goes for me.

- There is a really cool nostalgia about, you know, following the people who traveled the Natchez Trace before us, you know, using a bicycle to do so.

And while it's definitely not as primitive of a method that they used, it gets you a little more personal with the land around you, and makes you realize the struggle it was to travel that route without the use of modern motors or machinery.

- On  Mississippi Roads, we’ve traveled everywhere from the Coast to the Delta, and from the Piney Woods to the Mississippi River.

This next story we go to a few places I find interesting.

(upbeat guitar music) Time and money not an issue, we have plenty of places to go in Mississippi.

You can easily fill a large part of a day at some of them, a long weekend and others, and a lifetime going from place to place.

Here's a building in Jackson that probably has the highest ratio of people who've driven past it, as opposed to those who've actually stopped to see it than any other public building in the state.

The War Memorial Building next to the Old Capitol downtown.

It was built to commemorate the end of World War I.

They called it The Great War.

And of course, it took until the beginning of World War II to finish the building.

So there went the designation of the Great War.

But the building was finished by then, so the only commemoration of the second World War are panels in the elevator doors.

There are other panels on the entrance doors that reflect the conflicts and wars Mississippi and Mississippians have been involved in since the explorer days in colonial times.

One of the oddities on either side of the steps are bas-relief friezes of life in peace and war.

And if you look closely, you'll notice all the figures have the same face.

The Memorial for the Mississippi Unknown Soldier is here, a silent monument to the men and women who died in the line of duty, protecting our state and our country.

What you may not know is the War Memorial Building is also an office building, with many agencies and organizations with connections to veterans located here.

It's just downtown Jackson on State Street.

If you drive in Jackson, you probably pass by.

Maybe drop by some time and see what there is to see here.

Here's a quick one, it's the Old Courthouse in Ashland.

Ashland is the county seat of Benton County.

That's the middle county along the Tennessee line.

Tunica, DeSoto and Marshall are to the west of it.

Tippah, Alcorn and Tishamingo to the east.

For some reason, fairly early on in doing  Mississippi Roads, I noticed I had never been to Ashland.

I thought I'd make it a challenge to see how long it would take for me to get there.

And it wasn't right away, but I had to do an assignment at a farm fair in Michigan City right on the Tennessee line in Benton County.

And although it was easier to go through Holly Springs to Michigan City, on my way home, I decided to purposefully swing off Highway 7 South onto Highway 72 East and then take Highway 5 South and go to Ashland.

And my GPS centered me on the old courthouse, now a museum.

Now I've been to Ashland, man.

Moving on to an entirely different topic, thank Mansfield Downes if you boat Mississippi's small rivers and streams.

I wouldn't have had any idea who he was until I read journalist Bill Minor's “Eyes on Mississippi” book.

He lists Mr. Downes as a hero because he was the one person who convinced the Legislature to revise the Public Streams Law.

Till 1971, a public stream in Mississippi was one on which you could float to steamboat loaded with 200 bales of cotton for at least 30 straight days a year.

A little outmoded, maybe.

All of the other smaller rivers, creeks, and bayous belonged to the landowners through whose property they ran.

That means if you wanted to try to float a creek or fish a small river, you might have been arrested for trespassing back then.

But in 1971, by a squeaker, the Legislature updated the public waterways qualifications and opened up about 90% of the places we can use today, and that may have never been done, or at least it wouldn't have been done when it was, had it not been for that one man taking on the establishment.

So one person can do it.

Our waterways are nature's gift to us.

And since 1971, we can float, boat, or wade pretty much all of what we have of them in Mississippi.

One more place I spent a lot of time since I left it after high school was the Delta.

One of my childhood memories is riding with Daddy to Memphis on those flat hot highways.

The heat making a mirage you can see from a long way off in the flatland.

Looked like the cars ahead were driving in water.

My entertainment, as we drove along, was to watch to see if we'd ever catch up with the water.

We never did.

It's like we had Moses riding along, parting the deluge just before we'd get to it.

The natural state of the Delta as wet, though.

It's pretty much swamps and bayous as recently as the Civil War.

I mean, if you went there, you went in a boat.

After the 1927 flood, the larger of these rivers that rolled out of the hills and into the Delta were dammed to better regulate the ebb and flow of Nature's inundations as it rolled across the flatlands every Spring.

And now we have Grenada, Enid, Sardis, and Arkabutla Lakes to play in.

Cotton in the Delta has been replaced by corn as of right now.

Now that's subject to swing back, or swing to something else over time, but it's corn right now.

High enough to make you lose your landmarks when you're riding on the roads you haven't been on for a while.

So there's a start of some of the places I've been, and they're just mentioning the places and not the people who populate them, and the culture they've created as they live there.

So stop and get to know the people, and you'll never get anywhere.

But then again, you really wouldn't want to move on too quickly either, or you'll miss something.

You'll miss Mississippi.

That's all the time we have for this episode.

If you'd like information about anything you've seen, contact us at: And check out our Mississippi Public Broadcasting Facebook page while you're at it.

Check out our  Mississippi Roads Facebook page, too.

Till next time, I'm Walt Grayson.

I'll be seeing you on  Mississippi Roads.

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