BY WALTER SILLERS
The County of Bolivar
was created February 9, 1836 during the administration of Governor Charles Lynch.
It was named for General Simon Bolivar, a South American patriot. It contained
40 townships with an area of 1440 square miles. Its present area is 879 square,
miles. It is bounded on the north by Coahoma County, on the south by Washington
County, on the east by Sunflower County and on the west by the Mississippi.
The County is now
divided into two judicial districts, the line of division running north and
south. Rosedale, situated on the Mississippi River, is the county seat of the
first district, and Cleveland, situated on the main line of the Yazoo and
Mississippi Valley Railroad, is the county seat of the second district.
The
first county seat of Bolivar County was located at Bolivar Landing, and again,
it was located at a point on a high sand ridge about two miles northwest of the
present town of Beulah, this site being known to this day as "the old
courthouse field." Subsequently, the county seat was removed to Prentiss
on the Mississippi River opposite Napoleon, Arkansas.
This was the crossing
point, where the covered wagons trekked West and the stream or--hardy pioneers,
who crossed from Prentiss to Napoleon, continued to flow through the forests
and across the great river to the West long after the Civil War and until the
railroads came.
The first settlers of
Bolivar County were planters attracted by the fertile lands upon which cotton
grew in luxuriant perfection, and where is now grown the finest long staple
cotton in the world, Sea Island cotton alone excepted. The soil is from forty to
sixty feet deep, as shown by wells and the caving banks of the Mississippi
River. When the top soil is exhausted, all that is required is to plow deep and
turn up virgin soil.
The soil and formations
show that the Yazoo Delta was once a great lake or basin, which has gradually
filled with sand and silt through the centuries, the rich alluvial land of the
Delta being thus formed.
Islands and land were formed by evulsion,
such as occurred when the cut-off, made in the Mississippi River in 1863,
formed Lake Beulah, a lake originally twelve miles long by one, to one and
one-half miles wide. Land gradually formed at both ends, closing the lake
except for the inevitable bayou outlets. The lake is slowly narrowing and being filled by sand and silt and converted into land. There are many
other such formations in process of land building.
Nature's process of building land in the
Delta can be studied on Lake Beulah, and the observer may learn how the Delta
was made. The foundation is the sand carried in the currents of the muddy
Mississippi River, on which the willows soon appear; then through their limbs
and leaves the silt is caught and deposited on the sand, creating the rich
alluvial lands. In the course of time, the cottonwood and other trees crowd out
the willows, and so the great forests form and grow, to be mowed down by man.