July 18, 2010
How to get there:
The Little Red School House may be reached by exit No. 144 or exit No. 146 from I-55, fifty miles north of Jackson, Mississippi.
Phone:
- (662) 472-2897
Cost: Free
Hours:
The building is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Notes:
If you come early enough in the day, go to the house across the street and ask for a tour.
Map:
Just stop whenever you see something interesting.
From Little Rock we headed south to New Orleans. To get there we had to drive through the state of Mississippi. Most American kindergarteners know “Mississippi” as the first multisyllabic word they can easily spell, but they may not know where it is or what they can do there.
I knew where the state was, but I had no idea what I could do there. I looked on wikitravel.org, but there wasn’t much information there. I tried a map; nothing. I kept searching the TomTom for tourist attractions on our route, but there was nothing very Mississippian around.
Don’t misunderstand me. There were some stuff in Jackson, the state’s capital. It had science museums, parks, and malls. But I wanted something that could only be done in Mississippi.
Then we came across a sign for the Little Red School House in the town of Ebenezer. We stopped in, but it was closed. We took a few pictures and I later looked up the information on the internet.
It was built back in 1847 by the Masons to serve as a school. It’s not used as a school now. Now it’s really only a tourist attraction, though not many tourist stop by. Once a year, the building does see some action when the Order of the Eastern Star holds it’s annual picnic in August.
That’s all we saw in Mississippi. But if you are wondering why we didn’t see the famous river for which the state was named, it’s because other states like Tennessee and Louisiana have better, more accessible views of the river.
