Rodney, Mississippi - A Ghost Town

I just couldn't let the comment pass that Rodney was once the largest town between Memphis and New Orleans. This is not true because Natchez, Mississippi and Baton Rouge, Louisiana were always bigger. [H. Clark Burkett, 04/24/2009]

The population of Rodney is definitely not zero. This may not be the town it was in its heyday but as I visited it today there are still residents. My dad and a group from the church spent a week here in 1979 or 1980 after a flood helping rebuild and I heard of this little town many times after he returned home. [Robin Snyder, 09/28/2008]

Rodney does have people who live there. I know this because for several months, I was one of them. There is a an elderly black lady who lives there, Daisy McGill. She was born and raised there. Her mother was the first female Postmaster in the state of Mississippi. If you get there, locate Ms. Daisy and she can tell you all about the town that once was. She is a walking history of Rodney. The house that I lived in was located right across the street from her home. Since I left, that house was separated into three sections, trucked to Bolton, MS, and restored.

As to the church with the cannonball in the wall, it is a Methodist Church [tipster Joe smith corrects that this is actually a Presbyterian church] and was fired upon during Sunday morning services. Up the hill behind the church is a cemetery. The oldest grave I saw in there was well before the Civil War and the cemetery is still used today. When it has been raining a lot they have to wait for the road to the cemetery to dry out to get to it.

There is a book written by Gordon Cotton, Retired Curator of the Old Courthouse Museum, Vicksburg, MS, that tells all about Rodney's history and contains pictures of the town. [Rachel Smith, 07/07/2007]

Some friends and I checked out Rodney late one night in the summer of 2003. There were several old homes, buildings, and a church with a cannon ball stuck in the front wall. In addition it seems that Rodney has been overtaken by a local hunting community -- at one half of the area there were lived-in homes and flayed deer in spotlights. The latter certainly added something primal and disturbing to my experience of the place. Didn't see any people, but they're there. [Matthew Marble, 08/26/2005]

Mississippi ghost town. I've not made the trip to Rodney yet but I have found a lot of info on the town. Before the Civil War this was the largest city on the Mississippi River between Memphis and New Orleans and even missed being chosen as the state capital by one vote! Very few now have heard of the town. Its demise started at the end of the war when the river changed course and left the port town landlocked. Soon after a fire almost destroyed the entire town. The final blow came when the railroad came through the town of Fayette, 15 miles east. [David Spangler, 03/24/2004]