Finding the Ghost Town of Rodney, Mississippi

Last week, we took off for Natchez, Mississippi.

Tourists laud the biscuits, the winding river, the old biker bar under the hill and the cemeteries. There are more dead people in Natchez than there are living.

It’s a fine October destination, as you cruise past gingerbread Victorian houses, strung up with fake cobwebs, pumpkins lining the wraparound porches. You rest your head in one of a dozen darling bed-and-breakfast properties, after eating tamales and hunting for antiques.

I wasn’t actually traveling to see Natchez. I’d come for something far more traditional. Far more Halloween.

I didn’t want the Party City version of October.

I wanted the Vincent Price film.

Rodney, Mississippi was my true destination. Thirty miles north, it’s a ghost town.

Rodney once had a post office, a pastry shop, and a hotel. It had two grand churches, where the Presbyterians and Baptists found pews, prayer and gossip. That was back in the mid 1800s, though, when Rodney had a population of nearly 4,000. It was almost the capital of Mississippi, losing out to Jackson by a mere three votes.

The location of Rodney was appealing in those days. Deep woods, dark soil. One could grow collards and keep chickens. The river was two miles away, and Natchez just 30 more. You could even get to New Orleans easy enough, if you sat on a boat and let Ol’ Man River sing his song.

Flowing water meant life. It was transportation and fuel for crops. It dampened your garden and replenished your children on 100-degree August days.

It was water that killed Rodney­–– first, in a Yellow Fever pandemic in the summer of 1843. It likely came from New Orleans, but, as we all know … blaming a place for a pandemic doesn’t fix it.

A panic quickly set in and people fled. They returned, though. And for years, they prospered, despite a few more bouts with the mosquito-born illness; despite the Civil War.

Water killed Rodney in earnest in 1927.

Upriver, the Mississippi began forming a sandbar. The pressure toppled the river banks, crashing into downtown in 1927. It upended buildings, killed livestock, swamped the church pulpits and washed out the roads. By 1930, the town was officially abolished.

The mere idea of Rodney was first planted in my head by my ghost-story-loving aunt about five years ago.

“Only a handful of people still live there,” she said. I pulled Rodney up on Google, and found a surprising proliferation of love for the place. Writers and photographers have kept this abandoned town in conversation, at least amongst those who have actually been.

“It’s extremely hard to find,” my aunt said. “Almost everyone who tries gets lost in the woods.”

I pictured myself in a pith helmet, thwacking through a jungle of kudzu, trying to remember if I’d gone left or right at the bent pine tree.

I wouldn’t know it at that exact moment five years ago, but Rodney had a hold of me too.

Last week, on a sunny, October day, we found (after two tries) the small sign for “Fellowship Road” off the County Road 552.

We drove for nearly 15 minutes on a narrow, curving course. Then the pavement suddenly crumbled into Mississippi red dirt and gravel. The recent hurricane had washed part of Fellowship Road out, and dump trucks had only just arrived to clear toppled trees. Another 10 minutes went by, my top speed at 35 mph, as we cruised through the dense woods, spotting strange cardboard signs for hunting lodges and tattered political posters nailed to trees. A burnt out trailer on the right; an abandoned deer stand to the left. Then, the signs for “Rodney Road.” Like something out of a dearly loved novel I read once. My heartbeat quickened.

Suddenly, I was just there. I was in Rodney.

The Presbyterian Church is a red-brick relic, leaning against new plywood on the right side, she sags into the wet earth. “If you dig a foot, you’ll hit water,” I heard my aunt’s voice in my head.

This church has been called the state’s finest piece of Federalist architecture. It’s still stately, especially inside where the white pews are covered now in plastic and work is underway on the soft, peach-hued brick walls. The Rodney Historic Preservation Society is a thing. It was formed a few years back, by the few people who’ve called this town home in recent decades. Even when town members move away, they stay attached.

There’s even a Rodney newsletter. It comes out quarterly, sent to people far and wide, who weirdly remain tethered this little, river-snatched stretch of land.

Across from the church, there was a rotting wooden structure. Possibly a school? Someone’s former house? I wasn’t sure. No one was around to explain anything. “Watch for snakes,” my aunt’s advice swam forward, as I crossed a rusting strip of metal, over a place where the ground had given way.

I pushed open the front door. Inside, it was a worthy setting for the Blair Witch Project II. My foot sunk an inch as I stepped through the doorway, the floorboards solid as warm grits. I stepped back out quickly, not wanting to fall through to whatever lay beneath.

Razor wire stretched between maintained fence posts on another fading, derelict structure, but fresh laundry was strung across it, as proof of life. Six residents remain.

I met not a one as I wandered up to the Mt. Zion Church––Rodney’s most famous landmark. It’s been photographed floating by Frank Relle; a picture I’ll one day purchase, when I can find the funding.

As for Rodney’s preservation funding, it’s underway. The town may still be underwater six months out of every year, but those who love Rodney refuse to let it sink. It will never go gentle into that good night, Mississippi River and time be damned.

If you’d like to donate to help save the structures, you can do so here.