Jeff Busby Park, on Little Mountain in Choctaw County, is named for Thomas Jefferson Busby, the Houston lawyer and congressman whose 1934 bill started the federal survey of the Old Natchez Trace. Busby served Mississippi in the House from 1923 to 1935. Approached by the columnist Jim Walton in 1933, he sent to the Library of Congress for maps and documents on the old road, decided it deserved to be rebuilt and paved, and let his supporters know he would need their backing; years later he joked that they had needed somebody to whoop and holler. In February 1934 he introduced two bills: $50,000 for a survey, and $25 million to build the parkway. Both houses passed the survey bill after a two day hearing in March. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes then reported it was not in accord with the President's program and advised a veto.
Busby hurried to Washington and arranged a meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt on 19 May 1934, with members of Congress from Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee behind him and Senator Pat Harrison speaking for them. Roosevelt withheld the veto and had the survey paid for out of the Park Service's roads and trails money.
Busby lost his party's renomination the same year and never served another term. His part is also disputed: the Park Service's own history notes that his account comes largely from his retelling, and that Senator Hubert Stephens's sister insisted Walton had brought the same idea to her brother. The site, once known simply as Little Mountain, was named in Busby's honour.
Getting there
33.4135, -89.2614
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