Grenada: Two Rival Towns That Married on the Fourth of July

Grenada, Mississippi came into existence through one of the stranger acts of civic reconciliation in American history. In eighteen thirty-three, two rival land speculators platted competing towns on opposite sides of the same section line. Franklin Plummer's Pittsburg and Hiram Runnels's Tullahoma grew up right next to each other, each trying to out-commerce and out-brag the other.

They shared a boundary, today it's called Line Street, and spent three years in bitter competition. Then on July fourth, eighteen thirty-six, in what locals called a marriage, the two towns merged and named the result after the province of Granada in southern Spain, spelled the American way. Grenada became a railroad hub in the eighteen fifties, serving as headquarters for construction of the Mississippi Central and the Mississippi and Tennessee lines.

During the Civil War, Confederate forces defended the Yalobusha River here. The city that grew from a shotgun wedding between rivals still holds the seam between them.