Waltersville

Waltersville was a place to go for fun. Early on it was called Dayton's Cow Pen, and it took its later name from Sam and Kitty Walters, who came from Nova Scotia in the 1880s and opened several businesses. Trolley lines, horse tracks, baseball games, bike races and steamboat excursions earned it a reputation as Vicksburg's Coney Island. Residents recall that at its height more than 5,000 people lived there, making it larger than Vicksburg, with churches, schools and a sawmill. The state chartered the town in August 1904.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 0.2 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.
• Old Court House Museum — 2.0 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 — 2.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Fort Nogales — 0.6 mi
• Burial Site of Lynching Victims — 1.2 mi
• Soldiers Rest C.S.A. Cemetery — 1.2 mi
• Dr. Lemuel James Bowie — 1.5 mi