Camp Jefferson Davis

In July 1848, as the Mexican War ended, the army opened Camp Jefferson Davis at East Pascagoula to sort out returning troops under General David Twiggs: parts of six regiments and the 2nd Dragoons, some 1,949 men. The wounded went to a hospital called Camp Lawson on Greenwood Island, where disease claimed soldiers who were buried on the island. Erosion later exposed the graves, and in 2010 some remains were reinterred at Biloxi National Cemetery. The site became a military asylum that opened in 1852 and closed in 1855.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Island Lighthouse at Lighthouse Park — 2.4 mi
  What survives of the 1832 Round Island light, moved to the foot of the Pascagoula River bridge, with a free walking pathway through nine eras of Pascagoula history.
• LaPointe-Krebs House (Old Spanish Fort) — 2.9 mi
  The oldest standing structure in Mississippi, a French colonial plantation house in Pascagoula, set on land where Pascagoula and Biloxi peoples lived before the colonists came.
• Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge — 10 mi
  A refuge for one of the rarest birds in North America and the wet pine savanna it needs, created in 1975 as the first refuge established under the Endangered Species Act.
• Walter Anderson Museum of Art — 18 mi
  A museum in downtown Ocean Springs built around the artist who rowed to Horn Island to paint, with his 1952 murals of Iberville's 1699 landing and the Seven Climates of the town.

More markers nearby

• St. Peter Missionary Baptist Church — 0.9 mi
• R.A. Farnsworth Summer House — 1.3 mi
• Pascagoula Street Railroad and Power Company — 2.2 mi
• MS Gulf Coast Blues & Heritage Festival — 2.6 mi