By the end of the 1830s, Grand Gulf was the third largest town in Mississippi. As many as twenty steamboats a day stopped at Grand Gulf and the town boasted a hospital, a theater and numerous retail stores in a commercial district of over seventy blocks. A series of disasters struck the town beginning in 1843 with a devastating yellow fever epidemic. By the time of the Civil War, Grand Gulf was a ghost of its former self, with just 150 inhabitants.
Two important military battles were fought here, one in 1862 and one in 1863
I will have more to say about Grand Gulf when we visit Rodney, another deserted river town. The story of Rodney and Grand Gulf have several interesting features in common, and the fate of both towns was sealed by the fickle Mississippi River.
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