Cooper's Ferry

Monticello sat on the Pearl River, once Mississippi's most important waterway after the Mississippi itself. After the War of 1812, settlers crowded into the valley and petitioned the government to clear the river for traffic, and the territory's capitals after Natchez and Washington stood on the Pearl, briefly at Columbia and Monticello. Natchez residents blocked clearing north of the thirty-first parallel until about 1830. In December 1835 the steamboat Choctaw became the first to ascend the river to Jackson, opening a golden age of steamboats in the 1840s and 1850s. By 1840 Lawrence County had ten sawmills.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prentiss Institute — 15 mi
  A school for Black Mississippians founded in 1907 in a former plantation house, with a restored 1926 Rosenwald building that now holds a museum.

More markers nearby

• J. B. Lenoir — steps away
• A. H. Longino — 0.3 mi
• Gov. A. H. Longino House — 0.3 mi
• First Choctaw Cession — 13 mi