The Birthplace of C Spire

C Spire grew out of small-town telephone companies. The firm that became Cellular South bought the Calhoun City Telephone Company in 1947, then in 1959 the Delta Telephone Company and the Franklin Telephone Company. It acquired its first wireless licenses in 1986, and in 1988 Cellular South launched first-generation service on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. By 1996 it reached 42 Mississippi counties. In 2011 the company rebranded as C Spire, short for Customer Inspired. It now sells wireless and gigabit fiber service across Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Homochitto National Forest — 6.3 mi
  A 191,839-acre national forest in seven southwest Mississippi counties, replanted by the Civilian Conservation Corps, with Clear Springs and the 1,075-acre Okhissa Lake.
• Mount Locust — 23 mi
  A 1780s Natchez Trace inn and cotton farm at milepost 15.5, with an enslaved people's cemetery of 43 graves and a brick kiln behind the house.
• Emerald Mound — 24 mi
  The second-largest Mississippian ceremonial mound in the country, beside the Natchez Trace Parkway, built by ancestors of the Natchez and kept from climbing at the request of tribes.

More markers nearby

• Henry Dee and Charles Moore — 0.4 mi
• Union Church — 16 mi
• Crosby — 17 mi
• Salem Church, Cole's Creek — 19 mi