Even as a child, I was drawn to bridges with no roads, those vestigial bits of lost highways I would pass in the countryside. There’s one on Highway 22, over Panther Creek, between Canton and Flora. I used to ride that road a lot with my dad, often going slow, with a trailer of cotton or water behind us, unable to go faster than 45 without something truly disastrous happening.

Old roads sometimes run parallel to their modern versions, but just as often they do not, the old road is gone, or drifts, connecting to towns or farms or roads that no longer exist. People are like that too, going back to old ruins that only provide memory and potential.

But when the road comes to cross a creek or a river, the needs of the past were same as the present - a straight cut without a meander, lest the river take the bridge as it changes beds in the decades to come.

The bridge over Panther Creek is still there. You can see it if you look to the south when you cross. Panther Creek is named for the animal the farmland replaced, and the creek is being silted in by the construction of the subdivision named after it.

I never found many traces of Old Highway 22, or whatever road crossed Panther Creek in my grandfather’s day. My father grew up near that creek when it was surrounded by dairy farms. In my childhood it was a wilderness of run down barns and collapsing shacks. Those stainless steel tanks and pipes that survived the collapse of the dairy industry in the 70s were often sold off and shipped away, becoming the genesis of independent breweries across the country.

Before I was born there was a small town at the intersection of Highways 22 and 463. We used to see the rotting dairy farm, nothing more than a pond, and a barn, and an old hoop for hay. Then and now they called it Livingston, and these days you can buy a house out there for eight hundred thousand dollars.

As an aside, you can drive an almost straight line from North West Street in Jackson, all the way to Highway 22, and come out near this old bridge I’m pontificating about. West Street becomes Hanging Moss, becomes Highland Colony, becomes Bozeman Road, becomes Catlett Road, and then after a moment or two when you’re not really sure it’s a road anymore, you come to Highway 22. Surrounding you is a strange mix of rusting farms and multi-million dollar suburban sprawl.

Other than the stretch of Highland Colony Parkway, which was finished 15 years ago, all of this: West Street, Bozeman, Catlett, has been where it is for 70 years or more.

If you want to see what that drive looks like, of course I've made a map for you.

There’s another abandoned bridge on Highway 51, just north of Doaks Creek. Doaks Creek runs about 10 miles north of Doaks Stand, the tavern where the 1820 treaty was signed. I imagine they’re related.

You can find streets and roads named Old Highway 51 in Terry, in Pickens, in Hernando. This bridge belonged to an Old Highway 51. There are other signs as well - old roadbeds worn down into ponds. There are churches and houses that face away from the new highway, toward a treeline, or a ditch.

Long ponds are often made from old roads. Dirt roads wear down with repeated use, leaving gouges in the Earth. These fill with water, and without maintenance and drainage, they stay full.

Railroads get repurposed as well. In Jackson, they have dug up and torn down the old Illinois Central trestles that run parallel to State Street, near Town Creek. The bridge over town creek still stands, though there’s no way to reach it now. This line of property once belonged to the railroad, and now belongs to the city, which is using it for new projects, probably water related, given all the pipes on display.

This railroad was part of the famous New Orleans Great Northern railroad, which originally connected New Orleans to the bustling metropolis that was Canton, Mississippi. This section was built around 1906, and abandoned in 1972. It’s the reason for the tracks on commerce street, the railroad to which Hal & Mal's restaurant was a depot.
It’s the reason for the tracks on Commerce Street, it was the railroad to which Hal & Mal's restaurant was a depot. Other things were shaped by it as well, the old Chimneyville Smokehouse on High Street, and the building next door that is now the Cook Out Parking Lot, plus the railroad hotel/brothel turned apartments turned coffee roastery turned real estate speculation on Spengler Street.

The northern end is what would eventually become the Museum Trail. I traced it a long time ago, before the Museum Trail existed, back in 2015. (If you do go back in time 8 years, use the “back” button to visit each subsequent entry, because for some reason I posted them backwards).

Railroads are often repurposed for public use. Their original use is intensive, it requires a reworking of the land for long stretches, adding earth and taking it away in a standardized manner. The earthworks remain long after they are capable of supporting thousands of tons of train. When it is no longer profitable to maintain the line, the leases often revert back to the state or city that sold them off in the first place. Their construction and their “shortest line between two points” positioning makes them perfect for utilities, highways, and bridges.

This is a pattern in land use and in life. In evolution, this is known as “exaptation” - adapting an existing structure that has - or had - a different use. Just as your lungs and fingers are the way they are because of a land-dwelling fish millions of years ago, the city of today is shaped by the locations of railroads in the last century.

If you want to learn more about the old railroads of Mississippi, and to see where they now run, this is a great resource: Mississippi Rails, Mississippi Railroad History. There are county by county maps that show you not only these old roads, but also old towns, lost now, that once dotted these lines. Many of them were logging lines, and logging towns, designed to carry men to logging camps, and logs away. If you live in a rural area, you might well have a “dummy line” road near you.

Someday soon we’ll talk about one of these old lost towns that I share a name with. But not today.

The repurposing of railroads is a metaphor for organizations as well. Old hierarchies become entrenched, power and resources flow to them, shaping the organizations they create long after the old power system is dead. The young disruptor or revolutionary often mistakes these organizations as being therefore hollow, a facade that only has power because of the power it once represented, but they are still as dangerous as ever. White supremacists can still have you killed, the Catholic Church can still ruin your life, a billionaire can still poison us all and not even notice he was fined for it.

Until next time: stay moving on old roads and new. - FPJEROME