Turkey Creek Community

Black families freed from slavery settled on Turkey Creek in 1866, on about 320 acres, and Thomas and Melinda Benton came to hold half of it. Many neighbors later worked at the Yaryan, later Phoenix, Naval Stores plant, which turned pine stumps into creosote; elders still recall a 1943 explosion there that killed eleven. When Gulfport's growth pushed north, Derrick Evans came home from Boston and in 2003 founded Turkey Creek Community Initiatives. It restored the plant's pay office with a federal grant of $499,500 and kept its separate front doors, a legacy of segregation.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Biloxi Lighthouse — 11 mi
  A cast-iron tower lit in 1848 on the Biloxi beachfront, kept by women for most of its first century and still in service after Camille and Katrina.
• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 11 mi
  The beachfront parking lot beside the Biloxi Lighthouse where state markers recall the 1959 and 1960 wade-ins that opened Mississippi's public beaches to Black residents.
• Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art — 12 mi
  Frank Gehry's pavilions on the Biloxi waterfront, built around the pottery of George Ohr, the self-styled Mad Potter, and the rebuilt Pleasant Reed House.
• Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum — 13 mi
  A Point Cadet museum on Biloxi's oyster, shrimp and schooner past, from the packing houses and the shrimpers' unions to the Vietnamese families who rebuilt the industry.

More markers nearby

• Gulfport Army Airfield — 0.8 mi
• Gulfport Boogie — 1.7 mi
• Broadcasting the Blues — 2.6 mi
• Mississippi City Cemetery — 2.8 mi