Sardis, Mississippi

Settlers began arriving in this corner of north Mississippi in the early eighteen forties, drawn by river access and fertile soil. After the Civil War halted the town's growth for years, residents incorporated in October of eighteen sixty-six and chose a name from scripture: Sardis, one of the Seven Churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Today it is one of two county seats of Panola County, alongside Batesville.

The town's most lasting mark on the landscape came in nineteen forty, when the Army Corps of Engineers finished Sardis Dam and flooded the Little Tallahatchie River valley to create Sardis Lake. Authorized by the Flood Control Act of nineteen thirty-six and signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, it was the first of the Yazoo River headwaters projects, designed to protect Delta farmland downstream from seasonal floods.