THE CREATION OF BOLIVAR COUNTY

 

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.

 

 

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