It’s a “gulf’ not a “gulch”

I keep calling our latest location Grand Gulch instead of Grand Gulf Military Park.  That must have to do with the fact that I’ve spent nearly forty years out west where there are many gulches but no gulfs.

Grand Gulf Military Park is 30 miles south of Vicksburg, MS, and has a campground, museum, hiking trails, some restored buildings  - but the city of Grand Gulf is gone.  It was a major port that shipped cotton to northern textile mills. Then from 1843 to the late 1850s it was hit with a yellow fever epidemic, a tornado and then a Mississippi River flood. 

A bit of the city hung on until the Civil War.  General Grant needed to capture Vicksburg to win the war, but suffered heavy losses when he tried to attack Vicksburg from Grand Gulf. Grant eventually got his supply ships and men further south and crossed the Mississippi. The Grand Gulf Confederates were outflanked, outnumbered and forced to abandoned the town.  The few remaining buildings were burned to the ground and Grand Gulf became a major Union supply depot during the seige of Vicksburg.

Jim and Cooper at the Mississippi River just a half mile walk from our campground.  You can see a barge going south at the left of the photo.

Kudzu is a climbing, trailing, coiling vine that was introduced to the US from Japan.  It was everywhere on the road leaving to our campground. 

Houses like these were at the location of the former town of Grand Gulf...ready for the next flood.