On April 3, the Marion County Historical Society in Columbia will host a free walking tour of Main Street in Columbia. The program will take place in conjunction with the Smithsonian traveling exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America, on display in Columbia through May 8.
The Main Street walking tour will cover six blocks of the oldest part of downtown Columbia, Mississippi. Included in the tour are 905 Court House and the early activities surrounding Courthouse Square, early retail dry goods buildings, the Marion Theater and the original brick paved street in front of the building, the original Columbia post office, and more. The program will address historic preservation and community development in Columbia and Marion County and how the downtown area shaped the region’s economic development.
Crossroads: Change in Rural America offers small towns a chance to look at their own paths to highlight the changes that affected their fortunes over the past century. The exhibition will prompt discussions about what happened when America’s rural population became a minority of the country’s population and the ripple effects that occurred.
The exhibit will be on display in the Marion County Museum and is open to the public Tuesdays to Saturdays 9am-5pm. Crossroads is free to visit.
Weather date for the Main Street historic tour will be Saturday, April 10.
Upcoming Crossroads events in Columbia:
April 3, 5pm: City Cemetery Historic Tour
April 17, 3pm: Lampton Rural Center Tour
April 30, 8am:“From Snapshots to a Collage: Exploring Rural Mississippi Through Population Studies” presentation, Dr. John Green
