Rocky Springs: A Town That Disappeared

Rocky Springs grew up around a watering hole on the old Natchez Trace in the late seventeen hundreds. By eighteen sixty, more than twenty-six hundred people lived in the surrounding twenty-five square miles, supported by cotton. Then came one blow after another.

The Civil War drained the town of men. Union troops occupied and destroyed farms and homes. Yellow fever swept through in eighteen seventy-eight, killing dozens, then struck again in eighteen eighty-eight. In nineteen oh five the boll weevil arrived and ruined the cotton fields. Years of poor land management had already stripped the soil. The last store closed in nineteen thirty, the post office went with it. Today the National Park Service maintains the old townsite at milepost fifty-four point eight. A single Methodist church still stands, built in eighteen thirty-seven, and the cemetery holds the names of everyone who did not make it out.