Jackson's Military Road

The road was named for then General Andrew Jackson, hero of the United States victory at the Battle of New Orleans against British forces.

[1] On September 24, 1816, William H. Crawford, Secretary of War, informed General Andrew Jackson, then commanding the Army district at Nashville, of the appropriation, and directing that $5,000 be spent on the road to Louisiana.

"[2] Jackson was officially in charge of the entire construction, including the First and Eighth Infantry and the artillery detachment who supplied the labor.

Major Perrin Willis took command of the construction gang, then numbering about fifty, in April 1819, when the road reached the Pearl River.

West of the Tombigbee, the road passed through lands later assigned to Lowndes, Noxubee, Kemper, Newton, Jasper, Jones, Marion, and Pearl River counties, before crossing into Louisiana at the Pearl River twenty miles (32 km) west of today's Poplarville, Mississippi.

[4] Jackson's Military Road declined in importance in the 1840s due to disrepair and the difficulty of keeping it passable through the swamps of the Noxubee River.