Entries - Entry Category: Mississippi - Starting with M

In many ways, Manila is like other small towns of the northeastern Arkansas Delta. During the 1950s, such towns were vital to the development of the area and provided essential goods and services to farmers and their families, but the mechanization of agriculture led people to migrate to urban areas. In that respect, Manila has not experienced the population decrease of its Mississippi County contemporaries, primarily because “white flight” from the nearby towns of Blytheville and Osceola has led people to relocate to Manila. John U. Needham came to the Manila area in 1868 to establish a permanent camp for his grazing stock. He selected the highest, driest spot of the land that was once a part of the “Great …

Named for the youngest daughter of Robert E. Lee Wilson, Marie is one of several towns founded by Lee Wilson & Company early in the twentieth century. It is located on State Highway 14 about two miles east of Interstate 55. Periodically flooded by the Mississippi River, eastern Mississippi County was long a wooded swampland unattractive to early settlers of the state. Late in the nineteenth century, Lee Wilson began investing in this unwanted land, seeing its potential for production of wealth, first in timber and then in cotton. After funding a railroad, Wilson began harvesting the timber with his own lumber company. Clearing the land of trees, he exposed rich soil that had been frequently replenished by Mississippi River floods. …

Milligan Ridge is a small farming community located along State Highway 158 in the western portion of Mississippi County. It is a part of what is known as “Buffalo Island.” Big Lake and Little River separate the island from the remainder of Mississippi County on the east. The area has the distinction of being one of the last in the state to be claimed for farming from the swampy land around the Mississippi River. A few people inhabited the mosquito-infested swamplands as late as the 1890s. They came to the area to trap, hunt, and fish, or to hide from the law. For example, Lucilius Steven Milligan and his sons, James Riley and Jacob Minton Milligan, were running from the …