You're in Mississippi Now! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Andrew Jackson

The area surrounding present-day Jackson was originally inhabited by the Choctaw and Chickasaw. A French-Canadian trapper, Louis Le Fleur, built a trading post nearby in the early 1790s, and this location came to be known as Le Fleur's Bluff. In 1821 this location became the state capital and was named in honor of Andrew Jackson, who at that time was a military hero celebrated for his campaigns in the South against the British and the Native Americans. Of course, he later became the seventh President of the United States.

Answer: Kosciusko

Tadeusz Kooeciuszko was a Polish, Belarussian, and Lithuanian soldier and master engineer recruited by Benjamin Franklin. His engineering skills were credited for the successes of Ticonderoga and Saratoga, and General Washington entrusted him with the fortification of West Point.

The Continental Congress eventually promoted him to Brigadier General. Kosciusko, Mississippi, is northeast of Jackson in Attala County and is the original home of Oprah Winfrey, James Meredith, and former Brigadier General Nick Halley.

Another city named Kosciusko is in Texas.

Answer: Lafayette

While there is a Lafayette County in north Mississippi, the city of Lafayette is in Louisiana, a state that shares Mississippi's western border. Greenville, Hattiesburg, and Meridian are three of Mississippi's largest cities. According to the U.S. Census in the year 2000, Greenville's population was 41,663, Hattiesburg's was 44,779, and Meridian's was 39,968.

Answer: Mercury Rising

Alligator, with a population of 220 in the year 2000, is in north Bolivar County in the Mississippi Delta. Busy Corner is an unincorporated community located in Amite County. Possumneck is an unincorporated community located in Attala County. Mississippi has some other interesting if not entertaining names for towns and communities: Love, Progress, Soso, Midnight, Rolling Fork, Egypt, It, and D'Lo.

Answer: Ship Island

Since Ship Island had the only deep-water harbor between Mobile Bay and the Mississippi River, the island served as a vital anchorage for ships bearing explorers, colonists, sailors, and soldiers. French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville discovered Ship Island in February 1699, and used it as a base of operations to discover the mouth of the Mississippi River. Since then, it has been occupied by French, Spanish, British, American, Confederate, and Union forces. During World War II, the Coast Guard used the island as a base for anti-submarine patrol.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina almost completely submerged East Ship Island and caused tremendous damage to West Ship Island by obliterating the visitors' and employees' buildings as well as the island's boardwalk.

Answer: Pascagoula

Pascagoula is on Mississippi's coastline, near the state border shared with Alabama. It's the birthplace of singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffet, famous for his "Margaritaville" hit. The city is also the setting for singer Ray Stevens' "Mississippi Squirrel Revival." To the west of Pascagoula are a couple of larger Mississippi cities: Biloxi and Gulfport. Just a little farther west is New Orleans, Louisiana.

Answer: DeSoto

DeSoto County was named for the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, who is often credited with having "discovered" the Mississippi River. In 1542, he died at the end of a four-year expedition to find gold and silver in the present-day southeast United States and was buried in the banks of the Mississippi River.

Interestingly, DeSoto's county seat of government is a city named Hernando. DeSoto County, which lies along the Mississippi River, has been one of the fastest growing counties in the state of Mississippi.

It is located in the far northwest corner of the state and shares a border with the southwest corner of Tennessee, where Memphis lies.

Answer: The Natchez Trace Parkway

The Natchez Trace begins in Natchez, Mississippi, along the Mississippi River and crosses the Mississipi/Alabama border near Tishomingo, Mississippi. From there it extends through a small corner of Alabama and through a portion of Tennessee, ending in Nashville.

The majority of the park is within the borders of Mississippi. Originally, the trail was created by migrating animals but was eventually used by Native Americans traveling between the Cumberland and Mississippi Rivers. Later, European explorers used the trail for trade and transit.

By the early 1800s, use of the highway had faded due to bandits and bushwhackers as well as the shifting in significance of ports and trading centers.

Answer: A petrified forest

One of the major petrified forests in the United States is found right here in Flora, Mississippi. The forest consists of the remains of a log jam that were created nearly 36 million years ago in a raging river that flowed across the young continent. The site is a registered National Landmark, and some of the logs have been displayed in The Smithsonian.

Answer: Onward

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was in Mississipi to settle a border dispute between Mississippi and Louisana. During some time off, he participated in a bear hunt in Sharkey County. After an unsuccessful hunt, some men captured a young black bear, bludgeoned it, tied it to a tree, and presented it to President Roosevelt for him to shoot. Teddy Roosevelt refused, believing that to do so would be highly unsportsmanlike.

The Washington Post political cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew a picture of Roosevelt with a young cuddly bear and entitled it "Drawing the Line", a pun on Roosevelt's settling the border dispute and his refusal to shoot the bear.

The image became a famous one, and soon after the first teddy bear toy was created for kids.

Answer: Vicksburg

The Vicksburg National Military Park is primarily a site preserving the history surrounding the forty-seven-day siege of the port of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. The Confederacy surrendered Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, and the United States established control of the Mississippi River.

The park includes at least 1,325 monuments and markers, 20 miles of trenches, a 16-mile tour path, 144 cannons, two antebellum homes, the restored gunboat "The Cairo," and the Grant's Canal site.

Answer: Vaughan

John Luther "Casey" Jones, immortalized by the popular "Ballad of Casey Jones," died on April 30, 1900, after crashing his passenger train into a freight train stopped at Vaughan. He did his best to save lives by trying to stop his train before the collision; for this effort he was recognized as a hero, the only life lost being his own.

Interestingly, investigators of the wreck found only Casey to be at fault for having failed to heed warning flags.

Answer: Oxford

The University of Mississippi was chartered in 1844 and opened its doors to students in 1848. Oxford, in Lafayette County, has been the home of William Faulkner, Willie Morris, and John Grisham. A beautiful if not a magically peaceful retreat within the city is Faulkner's renovated antebellum home Rowan Oak, which has been open for touring.

The Southern literary magazine "The Oxford American" was born here as well.

Answer: Indianola

While born near Itta Bena, Mississippi, the legendary blues musician B. B. King lived in Indianola, Mississippi for a significant part of his youth. The city has a museum dedicated to him and his music. The Blues is perhaps the only music indigenous to the United States, and a type of music that began in and around the Mississippi Delta.

Indianola is also home to the famous Indianola Pecan House, where one can buy such varieties of flavors of nuts as Pralines, Rosemary Herb, and Jack Daniels. The Mississippi Cheese Straws sold there are heavenly!

Answer: catfish

In 2005, Mississippi produced 350 million pounds of catfish, or 55 percent of all the United States' catfish production. In the same year, Humphreys County had the greatest amount of water acres devoted to catfish production--20,600. Belzoni (pronounced bel-ZON-ah by its residents), the Humphreys County seat, has designated itself "The Catfish Capital of the World."