Antique Roadshow
“Anybody wanna go to the creek?” Daddy asked, shortly after coming in from work. Of course, nobody said no… not on that hot, pre-air-conditioning, summer day! “Well they’re here, load up!”
On that day, in June of 1959, Aunt Reicey and Uncle ’Nell and their boys, Mike, Jerry, and Kenny, had just driven up and would join us, as they often did, for the trip down to the City Bridge for a few hours of swimming and relaxation. Their oldest son, Wallace, may have been with us, but I don’t remember.
So, with much glee, we all piled into the back of Daddy’s old Ford pickup and awaited Mama, as she gathered up some towels and the picnic basket.
In this June 1959 snapshot, we were in the back of Daddy’s pickup, “bound for Red Creek” as the handwritten caption says. That’s my cousin Jerry (7) on the running board, John (3) is seated, Judy (9) and my cousin Mike (8) are standing, and that’s my 5-year-old self leaning on the tailgate. Keith (8) is obscured behind Mike. Aunt Reicey is standing beside the truck and I’m not sure who is in the cab.
While there were several places we could’ve gone for a swim, “going to the creek” almost always meant going down to Red Creek at the City Bridge. I have many fond memories of the times spent there. We would sometimes go after working in the garden, sometimes after Sunday dinner, sometimes we’d have large family gatherings and cookouts there. I was even baptized there. As a teenager our scout troop sometimes camped along the white sandy beaches. My cousin Bill Breland and I, the week after our high school graduation, put in at the City Bridge and made a leisurely float trip down to Ramsey Springs, camping overnight on a sandbar near the old Cable Bridge. I can easily recall many other wonderfully pleasant times spent “at the creek” — while as a youngster, while dating, and while carrying my own family there — but suffice it to say Red Creek and the City Bridge hold a special place in my memory.
Daddy (Reynolds Lott, 32) with Judy (8), Keith (6), and me (4) at the City Bridge in 1958.
Men from Paramount Baptist Church awaiting the beginning of a baptism (City Bridge, 1963). Note the unpaved road and the single-lane bridge path.
But why the ‘City’ bridge? Surely, I wasn’t the only kid to wonder why this structure, way out in the country, miles from the nearest town or larger municipality was — and still is — called the City Bridge. I remember asking once or twice, but I never got an answer. I think it was Mama that said, “I don’t know, son, it’s always been called that.” I accepted that and I can’t say that I was ever bothered much about it. However, years later, I chanced upon the surprising answer while reading the federal Works Progress Administration manuscript for Stone County that was prepared back in the 1930s. What follows is a brief summary of what I’ve learned about this bit of local arcana from this interesting source and from the many other books and articles I’ve read. So, with apologies to PBS, here is my own little history about this old road, my “Antique Roadshow,” if you will.
Back in the 1820s and ’30s, before Gulfport, before Hattiesburg, before the old town of Augusta moved to New Augusta, before Stone County was formed out of Harrison County, even before Harrison was formed out of Hancock and Jackson Counties, there was Mississippi City, a small coastal town with a grandiose name. One of the ‘six sisters,’ a string of towns along the Mississippi gulf shoreline, Mississippi City was a major destination for folks in and around Big Level during the antebellum period. People would travel to ‘The City,’ as it was called, and to Wool Market and Coalville, two communities just north of the coast on the Biloxi River, to sell and barter their farm and timber products. Settlers from as far as 100 miles away came in ox-drawn wagons, loaded with wool, resin, charcoal, and other items of trade, to obtain staple goods brought in on the schooners from New Orleans and Mobile. And when Mississippi City became the county seat upon the forming of Harrison County in 1841, the town was even more important for the people in Big Level and in the other areas that make up present-day Stone County who needed to file their deeds, their wills, their lawsuits, and other such legal documents at the county courthouse.
A trip from Big Level to ‘The City’ required an arduous trek over a series of wagon roads that came to be called the City Road. From Whites Crossing, the southern portion of the City Road crossed Red Creek and a few smaller streams to reach the markets at the Biloxi River and on across to Mississippi City on the coast. It’s no mystery then that the bridge along this major thoroughfare that crosses Red Creek has long been known as the City Bridge.
North from Whites Crossing, the other portion of the City Road extended all the way to old Augusta in Perry County. Whether it was known as the City Road for the entire distance, I don’t know, but the road up to the Harrison-Perry boundary line was described by this name in an 1879 newspaper report that identified the road overseers commissioned by the Harrison County Board of Supervisors for that year. Additionally, my Great-great-uncle Crab Breland, writing in his “Crabology” column in the Biloxi Herald newspaper, referred to it as such in his reminiscence of a solo trip he made on horseback from Big Level up to Augusta back in the 1870s when he was a teenager.
Google map of Harrison and Stone Counties in Mississippi, annotated by Russell W. Lott, May 19, 2020
In case you didn’t know, the old town of Augusta, situated on the Leaf River, had to be moved when then railroad came through. The relocated town was given the name New Augusta. But, from the earliest days of statehood until 1860, the old Augusta was the location of the federal land office for the southeastern district of Mississippi. My ancestors, Col. John Bond and his son Elisha Bond, two of Big Level’s earliest settlers, both of whom homesteaded there in 1822, would’ve had to file their land patents in Augusta. Thus, they and the other pioneers in Big Level would have had reason to traverse the City Road in both directions.
With growth and development came the construction of new roads and highways causing a few portions of this famed old road to be discontinued and most segments to now be identified by other names. Though the historical purist in me wishes the entire length of it was still called by its original name, the City Road does live on. In fact, that stretch of road through the Sunflower Community from Wire Road down to the Stone-Harrison boundary line is still called City Road. And the name is still partially present in the portion of the old road that runs through the heart of Big Level, from Whites Crossing down across ‘the creek’ to its intersection with Wire Road. That road is now called the City Bridge Road. Yes, these names live on, but I suspect most people today have no idea of the history behind them—that’s probably been true for the last three or four generations. I’m okay with that, a little mystique just adds to the charm of this place I have long called home.
Notes:
WPA Manuscript & 1920 Census: Stone County, MS by J. Strickland & P. Edwards (2001)
https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/six-sisters-of-the-gulf-coast/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87065532/1879-03-07/ed-1/seq-3/
https://wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Mississippi_Land_Records
WORDS TO PONDER
running board (noun): a narrow step fitted under the side doors of a trolley, streetcar, car, or truck. It aids entry, especially into high vehicles, and is typical of vintage wagons and automobiles. The origin of the name running board is obscure; the first running boards predate automobiles and were installed on horse-drawn carriages as early as the 17th century.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgar·ca·na (noun): mysterious, specialized, or nearly forgotten knowledge; information accessible or possessed only by a few.
Source: merriam-webster.com
SONG OF THE DAY
"Seven Bridges Road" by the Eagles (Eagles Live, 1980)