River Bend, at milepost 122.6 of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Madison County, overlooks the Pearl River where the current slows and the river becomes the Ross Barnett Reservoir, formed by a dam built between 1960 and 1963. The Pearl is the longest river in Mississippi after the Mississippi itself, running 485 miles through two thirds of the state and draining nearly a fifth of its land. In 1699 French explorers named it La Rivière des Perles, a translation of the Acolapissa name Taleatcha. In the summer of 1732 Régis du Roullet traveled it from source to mouth, between July 18 and August 10, recording nearly every feature and finding the valley empty of people.
After the War of 1812 settlers crowded into the Pearl valley, and two of Mississippi's capitals were placed on the river, briefly at Columbia and then at Jackson. In December 1835 a steamboat named Choctaw became the first to reach Jackson, and for the next twenty-five years boats ran the river, occasionally even above Jackson. Much of the finished material for the Old Capitol in Jackson, including copper for the dome, came up from New Orleans by Pearl River steamboat.
Railroads took the trade after the Civil War. From 1880 the Army Corps of Engineers worked to open the river to Jackson, and it abandoned that effort in 1922, withdrawing its last snag boat, the Pearl.
Getting there
32.5845, -89.8607
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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