Agriculture


The deed to the first land in Coahoma County was signed by President James Polk in 1834. Originally the Jefferies Plantation – where, in 1929, blues legend Charley Patton worked in the lumberyard – that Lula site is now home to Isle of Capri Casino.

Although settled at least two decades earlier by John Clark, who lived and farmed on the banks of the Sunflower River, the town of Clarksdale was not chartered until Feb. 25, 1882. The agrarian nature of society sprang from soil so rich that pioneers said that one Delta tree could fill a whole barrel with delicious purple plums.

Once the primeval forests were cleared and the fertile river bottom planted, the Clarksdale area grew so much cotton, the town was dubbed “The Golden Buckle on America’s Cotton Belt.” As the price of cotton escalated to $1 a pound – giving birth to the phrase “dollar cotton” – Clarksdale became known as “Magic City.” In 1921, the Wall Street Journal reported that Clarksdale was “the richest agricultural city of the United States in proportion to its population.” But when the bottom fell out of the cotton market, the town underwent long seasons of “slow walkin’ and sad talkin’.” Many plantations that had been in family hands for generations were lost.

The North Delta Museum in Friars Point offers interesting artifacts from the early farm years, as does Hopson Commissary on U.S. 49 South, where International Harvester and the Hopson family made agricultural history with the first all-mechanically picked cotton crop. In 1944, each machine replaced 50 men in the fields.

Stovall Farms, where blues giant Muddy Waters was first recorded for the Library of Congress in 1941, remains a working plantation and can be viewed from Stovall Road. At Lula, the ghost of the old gin remains. During spring planting of fall harvest, a drive through the turn rows of Delta cotton delights most tourists.

The Mississippi Delta is known for some of the richest land in the world. Principal crops include cotton, soybeans, rice, wheat, and sorghum. Others include hybrid striped bass, corn, pecans, etc.

Robert Birdsong (624-6051) is a blues expert and amateur historian who provides tours of the Delta for negotiable prices. E-mail Birdsong at mississippimojo@yahoo.com.