Corinth

Corinth exists because two railroads crossed here. The Mobile and Ohio met the Memphis and Charleston at a spot first called Cross City, and the town was established in 1853 and incorporated on March 12, 1856, taking the name of the Greek crossroads city. The junction made it valuable in war: Confederate Secretary of War LeRoy Pope Walker called it the vertebrae of the Confederacy. After Shiloh, Beauregard's army fell back to it, and the town was fought over for two years afterward.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center — 0.6 mi
  A Park Service center at Battery Robinett telling why two railroads made Corinth a prize, from the siege of 1862 to the battle of October, and what happened to the people who sought freedom there.
• Corinth Contraband Camp — 1.1 mi
  The site of a Union-run town of freedom seekers in 1862 and 1863, with a quarter-mile walkway of life-size bronze figures and the origin of a Black regiment that fought at Brices Cross Roads.
• Big Hill Pond State Park — 14 mi
  A 4,000-acre bottomland park in McNairy County built around a pond that railroad crews dug in 1853, with a 70-foot tower over Dismal Swamp and Civil War earthworks.
• Shiloh Indian Mounds — 18 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Tennessee River bluff: the remains of a palisaded Mississippian-era town with seven mounds and the visible rings of its house sites, inside Shiloh National Military Park.

More markers nearby

• Bobby Gene Emmons — steps away
• Grant's Headquarters — steps away
• Generals' Headquarters — steps away
• Johnston's Headquarters — 0.2 mi