Batesville

The land belonged to Ish-Sho-Nu-Nah, a Chickasaw man given title to more than 2,000 acres by the 1832 Treaty of Pontotoc Creek. Batesville began as a minor settlement, outranked by the river towns of Old Panola, about a mile northwest, and Belmont, across the Little Tallahatchie. When the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad ran through, steamboats lost out. The town was chartered in 1866, and after the Illinois Central extended the line to New Orleans, leading families of Old Panola moved their houses, businesses and churches here. The once busy port faded to ruins.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sardis Lake and Dam — 11 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.
• Enid Lake — 12 mi
  A Corps of Engineers lake on the Yocona River, finished in 1952 after farm families were moved off the valley floor, and the home water of a world-record white crappie.
• Casey Jones Railroad Museum — 22 mi
  The old Illinois Central depot in Water Valley, where Casey Jones worked in the 1890s, with a Mississippi Blues Trail marker for the songs written about his death in 1900.
• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 24 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.

More markers nearby

• St. Stephens Episcopal Church — steps away
• Dr. King Visits Batesville — 0.6 mi
• Batesville Magnolia Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Macedonia Rosenwald School — 5.9 mi