[5] Rodney's landing site was a key waypoint on Native American routes around the Mississippi Delta region.

[12] Spain lost control of the area in 1798,[13][14] and on April 2, 1799, the Mississippi Territory was organized as a part of the United States.

[16][17] In 1807, Secretary of the Mississippi Territory Cowles Mead assembled a militia to capture Aaron Burr at Coles Creek, just south of Rodney.

[19] Thomas Rodney presided over the Aaron Burr conspiracy trial and became Chief Justice of the Mississippi Territory.

[31][32] It was the primary shipping location for Jefferson County and areas as far as Brookhaven, Mississippi, about one week east of Rodney by horseback.

[33] According to historian Keri Watson, enslaved dockworkers loaded "millions of pounds of cotton" onto steamboats bound for New Orleans.

[7] Rodney resident Rush Nutt demonstrated effective methods of powering cotton gins with steam engines in 1830.

[36] The development of Petit Gulf cotton and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 spurred a westward land rush.

[22] Many early settlers of Texas crossed through Rodney; their wagons were poled across the water on flatboat ferries to St. Joseph, Louisiana.

[39] The college drew funding, students, and teachers from Rodney,[40] but it was built on 250 acres (100 ha) just north of the town.

[47] The early regional newspapers in Mississippi were typically one-room offices printing short papers on a single broadsheet.

[50] Part of the Union's strategy during the Civil War was the plan to advance down the Mississippi River, dividing the Confederacy in half.

[3] When Reverend Baker from the Red Lick Presbyterian Church traveled to Rodney via steamboat, he invited Rattler's crew to go ashore and attend services in what was still Confederate territory.

[53] When reports reached the ship, Rattler began to fire upon the town; a cannonball lodged into the church above the balcony window.

Commander James A. Greer aboard USS Benton anchored upstream near Natchez and admonished Rattler's captain for acting as a civilian during a time of war.

[53] In 1860, Rodney was home to banks, newspapers, schools, a lecture hall, Mississippi's first opera house, a hotel, and over 35 stores.

[53] A sand bar developed upstream and pushed the river west,[2] and Rodney's former shipping channel became a swamp.

[22] The railroad bypassed the town, running through Fayette, Jefferson County's seat of government, and Rodney's landing was abandoned.

[58] Some residents remained, including an African-American man Bob Smith, who had been Rodney's marshal during the Reconstruction era and operated a small, wood-framed hotel into the 1920s, known among travelers for its "delicious meals served in a crude dining room".

[7] By 1938, Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State described Rodney as "a ghost river town" that had died when the railroad passed it by.

[7] Novelist Eudora Welty found the town in ruins[7] and used Rodney as a setting in her works, including the novella The Robber Bridegroom.

"[22] Photographer Marion Post Wolcott documented Rodney for the Farm Security Administration circa 1940 and described it as a "fantastic deserted town".

[61] It was built on ground high enough to escape the town's regular flooding and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.

[65] When the church was being restored, the hole created by Union cannonfire during the Civil War was retained and a replica cannonball was placed in the exterior wall.

[3]Alston's Grocery, which was built circa 1840, is south of the Presbyterian Church at what was once the intersection of Commerce Street and Rodney Road.

[65] The Sacred Heart Catholic Church was built in Rodney circa 1868, and the entire building was relocated to Grand Gulf Military State Park in 1983.

[3] Rodney is located near the southern end of the Natchez Trace, a forest trail that stretches for hundreds of miles across North America.