Okachickima

James K. Polk never lived in Mississippi, yet he was one of the wealthiest owners of land and enslaved people in the Yalobusha area. In 1835 he and his brother-in-law bought land here and sent twenty enslaved people, twelve adults and eight children, to clear it. Thirty-four were held there by 1840 and fifty-six when he died in 1849; he bought at least nineteen more while president and kept the purchases quiet. His will freed them only after his wife's death, by which time slavery had ended. Congressman Franklin Plummer also moved to this county and died in debt.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Holly Springs National Forest — 6.4 mi
  A patchwork national forest of about 155,000 acres in the north Mississippi hills, assembled in the 1930s from worn-out cotton fields and replanted in pine by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
• Grenada Freedom Movement Marker — 11 mi
  The Mississippi Freedom Trail marker at Line and Green streets for the 1966 Grenada movement, when Black children entering white schools were beaten by a mob and 13 white men were arrested.
• Casey Jones Railroad Museum — 16 mi
  The old Illinois Central depot in Water Valley, where Casey Jones worked in the 1890s, with a Mississippi Blues Trail marker for the songs written about his death in 1900.
• Enid Lake — 18 mi
  A Corps of Engineers lake on the Yocona River, finished in 1952 after farm families were moved off the valley floor, and the home water of a world-record white crappie.

More markers nearby

• Coffeeville — 3.8 mi
• Battle of Coffeeville — 4.8 mi
• Grenada Dam — 9.2 mi
• Magic Sam — 11 mi