Fulton

Fulton is named for Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat. The city was incorporated on May 11, 1837, and its post office was established on July 26, 1837. The same year, Fulton was made the county seat of Itawamba County. Until then, county business had been conducted in private homes and stores, including the store house of Elisha Thomas at Van Buren, the Tombigbee River port that was then the larger town. Both towns grew with settlers through the 1840s, each with blacksmiths, doctors, stores and lawyers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elvis Presley Birthplace — 16 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.
• Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center — 18 mi
  The parkway's headquarters and official visitor center near Tupelo, with a film, a small museum of the Old Trace and the surviving New Deal houses of the Tupelo Homesteads.
• Tupelo National Battlefield — 19 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.
• Chickasaw Village Site — 19 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

• Itawamba Community College — steps away
• Van Buren — 5.8 mi
• Tammy Wynette — 8.8 mi
• The Chickasaw Nation — 11 mi