Canton, Mississippi, Hollywood's Favorite Square

Canton was established in eighteen thirty-six as the seat of Madison County, laid out around a classic Southern public square that remains virtually unchanged to this day. Cotton was king here through the nineteenth century, and the courthouse square anchored the commercial and civic life of the plantation region.

That square became famous in a different way in the late twentieth century. Film crews discovered that Canton's block of original nineteenth-century storefronts was one of the most intact period streetscapes in the South. A Time to Kill, starring Matthew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson, filmed its courthouse scenes here in nineteen ninety-six. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, My Dog Skip, and several other films followed. The square is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and Canton celebrates the productions that put this Madison County town on maps far beyond Mississippi.