Vicksburg Siege

Residents of the besieged town dug into the yellow clay hills, and more than 500 dugouts were counted. Some families furnished them with rugs and pictures, and Union soldiers nicknamed the place Prairie Dog Village. Enslaved people carried the heaviest risk, because they were sent outside to cook and find food; one enslaved man was buried alive alone in a collapsed cave. Gunboats alone threw over 22,000 shells. An old story says Vicksburg refused to celebrate July 4 until World War II, but historian Michael Ballard says it has little foundation, and large celebrations were held by 1907.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — 3.1 mi
  Vicksburg's Greek Revival courthouse of 1860, raised on a hilltop with the labor of enslaved artisans and now a private local-history museum heavy on Confederate relics.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 3.6 mi
  A 16-mile tour road through the trenches of the 47-day siege of 1863, with a national cemetery and the story of the thousands of enslaved people who reached freedom behind Union lines.
• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 4.8 mi
  The raised hull of a Union river ironclad sunk by a mine in the Yazoo in 1862, displayed at Vicksburg National Military Park with the artifacts the river mud preserved.
• Lake Bruin State Park — 30 mi
  A state park on a Mississippi River oxbow near St. Joseph, named for a territorial judge who owned a plantation beside it, on a former fish hatchery site.

More markers nearby

• Tobias Gibson — 0.6 mi
• Alpha Kappa Alpha National Presidents — 1.8 mi
• Bowmar Avenue Elementary School — 1.8 mi
• U.S. African Brigade — 2.0 mi