2021 Visit Meridian Visitors Guide

32 33 VISITMERIDIAN.COM Walking through downtown Meridian, you can have a conversation with history. Think of it as a gathering of old-timers telling stories about the glory days — except that these old-timers are made of wood and brick and steel. • Mid-June: Juneteenth, a music-focused celebration of the abolition of slavery, downtown • Last Saturday in September: Rose Hill Cemetery Costumed Tour, with storytellers taking on the personas of notable people fromMeridian’s past, Rose Hill Cemetery • First weekend in November: Soulé Live Steam Festival, Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum/Soulé SteamWorks • Late November through December: Trees of Christmas holiday decorations at Merrehope and F. W. Williams historic homes • December: Santa’s Christmas Factory, Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum/Soulé SteamWorks EventfulHistory LISTEN Some once-proud buildings now stoop with age. Still, you can look at the details of their architecture — Italianate, Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Romanesque, and many other styles typical of 20th-century cities — and picture how they stood when they were young and strong and beautiful. You can almost hear the clang of streetcars and the happy hum of daily commerce from the days when downtown WAS Meridian. Many structures have stayed in top shape — or have had a little work done. Three resplendently refurbished adjacent buildings make up Mississippi State University- Meridian’s Riley Campus: the MSU Riley Center (the old Marks Rothenberg department store and the Grand Opera House), the Deen Building (the former Newberry department store), and the Rosenbaum Building (once the Kress five and dime store). In the next block, Meridian’s tallest structure has gotten an offices-to-hotel makeover. The Threefoot Building, a 16-story Art Deco beauty, opened in 1929. (“Threefoot” is an Anglicization of the builders’ family name, Dreyfus.) Other buildings exist now only as façades, or as a bit of crumbling wall, or as a ghost of an empty space. For a history buff, such fragments whisper of times gone by, like the ruins of the ancient world that draw travelers from around the globe. Markers from four different historical trails help fill in the gaps. The Mississippi Blues Trail and Mississippi Country Music Trail recognize the stars and the sites that helped create and develop those two very American musical genres. They intertwine more than you might think. Meridian-born Jimmie Rodgers is known as the Father of Country Music, but a marker near Union Station (a Mission Revival–style railroad depot, originally much larger) describes his contributions to the blues as well. The music trails extend statewide. The community has also created two local trails: the Meridian Civil War Trail (10 markers) and the Meridian Civil Rights Trail (18 markers). The war devastated the then- budding settlement. “Meridian, with its depots, storehouses, arsenals, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments, no longer exists,” proclaimed Union General William T. Sherman AND MERIDIAN WILL TELL YOU ITS STORY