Friday, I attended the open house at MUW’s Plymouth Bluff Center. The conference center and cabins have recently been renovated, and I was glad to see the excellent job that had been done as the Bluff is one of my favorite places. Few places contain the combination of Historic sites, scenic beauty, natural history, educational exhibits, and delightful nature trails as are found there. The Bluff’s story runs from about 80 million years ago to the construction of the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway, which opened in 1985.
The chalk bluff is the remnant of a Cretaceous Period seafloor. During the Cretaceous Period, the age of dinosaurs, a great inland sea began stretching about 100 million years ago from the Gulf of Mexico through Canada. Its eastern shore was located in present-day western Alabama between Columbus and Tuscaloosa. There were volcanic islands where Jackson and Midnight, Mississippi, (in the Delta) are located. The ocean deposits at Plymouth Bluff are from that period and date from 82 to 77 million years ago. Plymouth Bluff has been nationally known as an important site for fossils since the 1850s, when Dr. William Spillman of Columbus collected fossils there that became important specimens at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Fossils of shells, fish, marine reptiles such as mosasaurs and even a hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) have been found. Shark teeth are common in some of the strata as are large, ribbed oyster-related shells called exogyra. On the sandstone shelf at the base of the bluff are often found the impressions of a large muscle type shell named inoceramus and sometimes ammonites, a coiled shell of a mollusk related to the chambered nautilus.
The soil at the top of the bluff dates to the Late Pleistocene, which is often referred to as the Ice Age. Common fossils include the teeth of extinct horses and fragments of mastodon and mammoth teeth. Fossil bones of llamas, long horned bison, wolves and bears have also been found. The saber-toothed cat was here but its fossils are rare. One of the largest animals and most unusual, whose fossils may be found, is the giant ground sloth.
Although Paleo-Indians were in the area by 12,000 years ago, the earliest Native American site at the bluff is a Woodland period camp or small village dating back about 3,000 years. There is also a Mississippian Period Indian farmstead that dates between 1200 and 1300 A.D.
After the time of de Soto’s contact with the Indians of the area in 1540, there is a historic record of what occurred at the bluff. The French explorer Henri de Tonti passed a few miles west of the bluff on a trade mission to the Chickasaws in 1702. In May 1736 a French force on its way to attack the British allied Chickasaw Indians (at present day Tupelo) camped for three days at Plymouth Bluff which was called Octibea. Then in 1737 the French reported that the Chickasaw had a fort at Octibea. The Bluff is next mentioned in 1771 when British surveyor Bernard Romans canoed down the Tombigbee River and commented on the beauty of Plymouth Bluff. He wrote that “if placed near any town of note, I do not doubt would be much used as a walk.”
John Pitchlynn, U.S. interpreter and sometimes acting agent for the Choctaw Nation, moved from his Noxubee River residence, near present day Macon, to Plymouth Bluff in 1810 and established his residence there. With the beginning of the Creek War in 1813 and under threat of attack, Pitchlynn fortified his residence with a palisaded blockhouse. His small fort became known as Fort Smith. The fort became an important U.S. military meeting, supply, and assembly point during the Creek Indian War phase of the War of 1812.
In October Gen. Coffee led 3,000 Tennessee Militia down the St. Stephens Trace (Highway 45 from Columbus to Mobile closely follows its route) to reinforce Andrew Jackson prior to the Battle of New Orleans. One of his scouts was David Crockett. Coffee stopped on Oct. 14 to be resupplied at Pitchlynn’s.
In 1819, Pitchlynn’s residence at the Bluff became a U.S. Post Office. After the establishment of Columbus four miles downriver in 1819, the post office at Pitchlynn’s closed. In March 1820 the Columbus Post Office was established. In 1832 Pitchlynn’s son-in-law, Calvin Howell, had the land at Plymouth surveyed and established the town of Plymouth. Howell described the town in 1833 as having “a considerable number of log and frame buildings…We have one store and one grocery, in town, and a young man by the name of Carver, is teaching school.” According to an 1837 county census, the town had a population of 77 free persons and 122 slaves. But the town did not long survive and by the late 1850s it had all but ceased to exist except as a steamboat landing.
While much of the bluff’s face is now covered with vegetation there are still places relatively open where fossils can be found. As much as anything, though, there is the enjoyment of exploring a beautiful and sometimes mysterious place. It is a place overflowing with both geologic and human history. Along 4 1/2 miles of public walking trails the reason for Roman’s statement is still very evident today. Though the white chalk bluff face is now mostly overgrown the bluff remains an incredibly beautiful and remarkable place.
Today the bluff is home to the Mississippi University for Women Plymouth Bluff Center, which is both an environmental education center and a conference center located on about 190 wooded acres at the crest of the 80-foot high bluff. The center also has guest cabins totaling 24 rooms which can be rented. The center contains a small but excellent museum of natural and cultural history including a display of fossils either found or the type found at the bluff. The center is located about four miles from downtown Columbus at 2200 Old West Point Road.
The center’s phone and website addresses are 662-329-7126 and plymouthbluff.com
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.