Haney's Big House

Will Haney was born in Vidalia in 1895, served in France in World War I and rose to first sergeant. In Ferriday he sold insurance for People's Life of New Orleans and talked the company into keeping policies alive when flooded customers could not pay. He also owned rental property. His Big House began as a dirt-floor barbecue stand and grew into a bar and club, with a motel behind it in the 1940s because white motels refused Black travelers. A fire destroyed it in 1966. Firefighters blamed an ice machine; many in town suspected the Klan.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frogmore Cotton Plantation and Gins — 7.1 mi
  A working cotton farm near Ferriday that tells the plantation story through the people enslaved there, with quarters, an ancient mound and a rare steam-engine gin.
• Vidalia Landing Riverfront — 8.9 mi
  A riverwalk on the Mississippi at Vidalia, built on the site of the old town that moved west in 1938 when the river was cut off.
• Catahoula National Wildlife Refuge — 27 mi
  A 25,000-acre bottomland refuge beside Catahoula Lake, a Ramsar wetland that is a major early-season stop for ducks on the Mississippi Flyway.
• Lake Bruin State Park — 31 mi
  A state park on a Mississippi River oxbow near St. Joseph, named for a territorial judge who owned a plantation beside it, on a former fish hatchery site.

More markers nearby

• Frank Morris — steps away
• Jerry Lee Lewis — steps away
• Don José Vidal — 7.7 mi
• Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 — 9.0 mi