Battle of Okolona

Union cavalry under William Sooy Smith, about 7,000 strong, were meant to join Sherman's Meridian Campaign. On February 22, 1864, Nathan Bedford Forrest, with about 2,500 men, broke the column, which fell back in a running retreat of about 11 miles and lost five cannons at the start. By one count the column had taken in about 1,000 enslaved people on its march. Forrest halted his pursuit for lack of ammunition. Smith crossed into Tennessee at Collierville on February 26 and left the army in September. Preservation groups have since saved more than 269 acres of the field.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chickasaw Council House — 9.4 mi
  A roadside exhibit on the Natchez Trace Parkway marking the Chickasaw capital of the 1820s and the council house where the 1832 treaty of Pontotoc Creek ended Chickasaw title to Mississippi.
• Tupelo National Battlefield — 17 mi
  A one-acre park on Main Street marking the July 1864 battle of Tupelo, a Union victory that kept Nathan Bedford Forrest away from Sherman's supply line, with Black soldiers among the defenders.
• Elvis Presley Birthplace — 17 mi
  The two-room house in East Tupelo where Elvis Presley was born in 1935, with a museum and the church building the family attended, set near the vanished Black neighborhoods where he first heard the blues.
• Chickasaw Village Site — 18 mi
  A Chickasaw village on a remnant of the Black Belt Prairie beside the Natchez Trace Parkway, with house outlines marked on the ground and signs that speak in Chickasaw voices.

More markers nearby

• Okolona College — steps away
• Siggers High School — 7.6 mi
• Egypt Station — 8.3 mi
• William Colbert's Last Homesite — 10.0 mi