Roscoe Turner

Roscoe Turner left Corinth at 16 for Memphis and became a balloon pilot in the First World War. In California he talked Louis Goebel into giving him a lion cub, named Gilmore, who flew with him on publicity flights until about 1935. Turner won the Bendix Trophy in 1933, flying New York to Los Angeles in eleven and a half hours, and the Thompson Trophy in 1934, 1938 and 1939. Congress authorized his Distinguished Flying Cross in 1949, but he received it only on August 14, 1952, the last civilian to do so.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center — 0.2 mi
  A Park Service center at Battery Robinett telling why two railroads made Corinth a prize, from the siege of 1862 to the battle of October, and what happened to the people who sought freedom there.
• Corinth Contraband Camp — 1.8 mi
  The site of a Union-run town of freedom seekers in 1862 and 1863, with a quarter-mile walkway of life-size bronze figures and the origin of a Black regiment that fought at Brices Cross Roads.
• Big Hill Pond State Park — 14 mi
  A 4,000-acre bottomland park in McNairy County built around a pond that railroad crews dug in 1853, with a 70-foot tower over Dismal Swamp and Civil War earthworks.
• Shiloh Indian Mounds — 18 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Tennessee River bluff: the remains of a palisaded Mississippian-era town with seven mounds and the visible rings of its house sites, inside Shiloh National Military Park.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Corinth-1862 — 0.5 mi
• Bobby Gene Emmons — 0.7 mi
• Grant's Headquarters — 0.7 mi
• Generals' Headquarters — 0.8 mi