Randolph

Randolph outshipped Memphis in cotton until 1840. Platted by investors John T. Brown and Robert Bedford on the second Chickasaw Bluff, land the Chickasaw ceded in 1818, it was a good landing for flatboats, with the Hatchie River entering just north. In the mid-1830s it sent as many as 40,000 bales a year down the Mississippi. A failed railroad plan and an unfavorable mail route ended its rise in the late 1840s. Confederates built Tennessee's first fort there in 1861, and Union forces burned the town twice.

What the plaque says

Randolph 6½ miles. This Mississippi River hamlet was Memphis' early rival for commercial supremacy & was the state's biggest western shipping point in 1830. It declined after David Crockett's plan for Hatchie–Tennessee River canal failed. The town was burned during the War Between the States.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Pillow State Historic Park — 14 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Chickasaw Bluffs where, on April 12, 1864, Confederate troops massacred Black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender.
• Hampson Archeological Museum State Park — 17 mi
  A free state museum on the town square in Wilson that holds the Nodena collection, one of the best Late Mississippian pottery collections known, from a palisaded village on the Mississippi occupied from A.D. 1400 to 1650.
• Alex Haley House Museum — 20 mi
  The 1919 bungalow in Henning where Alex Haley heard the family stories behind Roots, now a state historic site and museum with his grave in the front yard.
• Sun Studio — 25 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Bobby Blue Bland (1930-2013) — 5.1 mi
• Paul W. Barrett — 5.1 mi
• Charles B. Simonton — 11 mi
• Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox — 11 mi