Van Buren

Van Buren stood on a high bluff on the west bank of the Tombigbee River and was named for Martin Van Buren. Before Fulton became the county seat in 1837, county business was conducted in private homes and stores, including the store house of Elisha Thomas at Van Buren. By 1840 it was the largest town in Itawamba County and had a busy river port, and its post office operated from 1839 to 1867. The Mobile and Ohio Railroad, finished west of town in the late 1850s, cut river traffic and ruined it. The old site is now cultivated.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elvis Presley Birthplace — 16 mi
  The two-room house in East Tupelo where Elvis Presley was born in 1935, with a museum and the church building the family attended, set near the vanished Black neighborhoods where he first heard the blues.
• Tupelo National Battlefield — 19 mi
  A one-acre park on Main Street marking the July 1864 battle of Tupelo, a Union victory that kept Nathan Bedford Forrest away from Sherman's supply line, with Black soldiers among the defenders.
• Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center — 20 mi
  The parkway's headquarters and official visitor center near Tupelo, with a film, a small museum of the Old Trace and the surviving New Deal houses of the Tupelo Homesteads.
• Chickasaw Village Site — 20 mi
  A Chickasaw village on a remnant of the Black Belt Prairie beside the Natchez Trace Parkway, with house outlines marked on the ground and signs that speak in Chickasaw voices.

More markers nearby

• Fulton — 5.8 mi
• Itawamba Community College — 5.9 mi
• Gaines Trace — 8.3 mi
• Tammy Wynette — 8.9 mi