History
In the years before Mississippi was discovered by Europeans, Native American tribes populated the state. Specifically in the Pine Belt region of Mississippi, the Natchez tribe resided. The Natchez provided a formidable challenge for French and Spanish settlers, but their population halved less than 15 years after contact with Europeans. Disease and warfare eventually forced them to settle with the Creek people or English colonists.
The Mississippi Territory eventually became a U.S. state in 1817, and the Pine Belt became more populated and Mississippi's main economical attribute next to agriculture. After the American Civil War, railroads were extended into the area. With the railroads came a man named Fenwick Peck. Peck became the founder of J.J. Newman Lumber Co., which eventually became one of the state's largest lumber mills.
Due to heavy logging and poor forestation, the region began to become scarce of trees. The J.J. Newman Lumbering Co. closed in 1931, due to being hit hard by the Great Depression and the lack of trees. It is said that the lumber companies using skidders, or cranes equipped with winches mounted on railroad cars, contributed to the alarming depletion of trees.
With its main industry inert, farming became more popular, but due to poor soil, the area struggled. As the region recovers from the logging fever, it has become harvested once again for its lumber.
Read more about this topic: Pine Belt (Mississippi)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)