Poverty Point World Heritage Site
Driving from Pendleton, AR to Vicksburg, MS | Visiting Poverty Point World Heritage Site | January 2024
After enjoying a beautiful and warm sunny day in Arkansas the day before, the clouds moved back in today, bringing the big storms we had been hearing about for a few days now. We were glad to be out of the Midwest which would be getting a blizzard, but knew we’d have to be careful and look out for flash flooding, high winds, and possibly tornadoes in the South. Knowing the storms would start happening in the afternoon, we wasted no time getting started with our day, hoping to have some fun before the rain.
We drove South, grabbing some more new counties along the way, and entered Louisiana for our second time. We navigated to Poverty Point World Heritage Site — our first ever world heritage site (this is a State Park, National Park Site, and World Heritage Site all in one)! We first stopped at the visitor center to pay the small fee and begin learning about this site. The thunder was already starting to the South and making its way Northeast, so after reading all the informational boards here, we opted for the driving tour rather than walking the trail through the park.
Starting on the driving tour, we took our time, reading through the pamphlet as we came to the numbered stops. We really wanted to hike up one of the mounds that has a trail to the top, but as soon as we arrived it really started to downpour. After waiting a bit, we decided to continue with the drive in hopes the rain would stop and we could come back. We continued driving, taking in the mounds and knowing that these are likely the oldest things we have seen in all of our travels around the US, dating back to as late as 1700 BCE. Most of the mounds and ruins we have seen in America are from the Mississippian Culture or their Southwestern neighbors and are from at least 500 CE onward, over 2000 years of difference. Only the Hopewell Mounds in Ohio are older than Christ, and they still only date to 200 BCE — the Hopewell Mounds were also added to the UNESCO list in September 2023.
The site is comprised of 6 concentric C-shaped rings that likely functioned as the primary gathering place and living area of the Poverty Point People. Interspersed around the site are several earthen mounds, that likely had some astronomical association, including a mound that pre-dates the rest of the site by another 1500 years! Obviously the size and age of the site leads to a lot of information, but also a lot of archaeological speculation. It’s unconfirmed if the Mississippian people are direct ancestors of those who lived at Poverty Point, or later inhabitants after the Poverty Point people moved on. Regardless, it’s a very important site in American Archaic period history.
After finishing the driving tour, we returned to the mound and waited a bit longer for the rain to clear up. When the first showers passed, we hurried to go for our short walk before they started up again. Thankfully the path up the mound was a boardwalk and not a muddy trail, and the views from the top were cool, especially with the moody skies. Charlotte decided it was much more interesting to sniff around the trail at the base of the mound, so we took turns walking up and down the mound before returning to the car.
Once we were finished at Poverty Point, we continued driving South to I-20 where we crossed the Mississippi River one last time on this road trip into Vicksburg. We drove North up to Delta National Forest where we had been thinking of camping that evening, though we were a bit undecided on whether we should just cash out on some hotel points and stay in Vicksburg just to be safe with the storms. When we arrived at a campsite, we learned that it wasn’t actually free like we had expected it to be, so we went back and forth on staying here vs. a hotel, but the decision was made easy when we heard not one but two trees fall nearby. The real storm hadn’t even started, so getting out of this wooded area (also right next to a river, so possibly a flood zone) seemed like the smart idea. We returned to Vicksburg and used hotel points to stay at a Hilton. Overall the storm here wasn’t as bad as what the Gulf coast got, and we heard that the Florida panhandle had quite a few tornadoes that even ripped through another campground we had been considering for later that week. We were just thankful to stay dry and have a quiet night in a hotel. This also set us up to be right next to where we wanted to start our next day: Vicksburg National Battlefield.
