Governor Ray Mabus

Ray Mabus was born in Starkville and grew up in Ackerman, where his father went from hardware to timber. Elected state auditor in 1983, he pursued county officials' finances in an FBI investigation, Operation Pretense, that led to indictments of fifty-seven of them. He took office in January 1988 as the youngest governor in the country, with the slogan Mississippi Will Never Be Last Again, and won a teacher pay raise and a unit system of county government. Kirk Fordice beat him in 1991. He was later ambassador to Saudi Arabia and secretary of the navy.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 22 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.
• L.V. Hull Legacy Center — 30 mi
  A folk artist's legacy campus on Allen Street in Kosciusko, opened in June 2026 a few doors from the National Register home and studio of L.V. Hull, the Unusual Artist.
• Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty Site — 32 mi
  A National Historic Landmark in rural Noxubee County where the Choctaw Nation signed away its last Mississippi land on September 27, 1830.

More markers nearby

• Governor J.P. Coleman — steps away
• Ackerman — 0.3 mi
• Choctaw County Blues — 7.4 mi
• Legion Lodge — 13 mi