Hilgard Cut

The cut was dug by hand in 1857 by people enslaved by local planters, among them James Brown, Thomas Dudley Isom, L. Q. C. Lamar and Jacob Thompson, who supplied the labor so the Mississippi Central could run through Oxford. The railroad's president praised that labor as free of strikes and drunkenness, and the slaveholders took company stock instead of cash. Brown, a university trustee, wanted passengers to see the campus, but the roadbed sat too low for it. Eugene Hilgard, the state geologist, studied the exposed soil layers. A concrete bridge replaced the wooden one in 1940.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 0.3 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Rowan Oak — 0.5 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• Oxford Square — 0.7 mi
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.
• Sardis Lake and Dam — 16 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.

More markers nearby

• Barnard Observatory — steps away
• "Dead House" — steps away
• Ventress Hall — 0.2 mi
• Documenting the Blues — 0.2 mi