Mississippi County Museum

The River

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Originally swamps, trees, and Indian tribes, the area began to draw scouts, hunters and even outlaws. Traveling the Mississippi River in steamboats, farmers, loggers and settlers began to see the advantages of this area that became Osceola. The steamboat captains gave the town its original name of ‘Plumb Point’. According to Mark Twain in his Life on the Mississippi, when one steamboat would inquire of another where to find wood for the steamboats, they were told to “go plumb to the point”, where enterprising settlers had stacked wood to sell. This was the beginning of Osceola. Loggers soon found that the abundance of many different kinds of wood was their dream, and soon the area was covered with fallen trees. Farmers heading down river for land noticed the rich Delta soil, and stepped off the steamboats to start a new life farming in land that could grow almost any crop. They soon found that cotton would produce almost unbelievable crops, and the combination of soil and warm temperatures soon made cotton ‘king’. As cotton was raised, it was not unusual for 500 bales of cotton to be loaded on steamboats to be sold for local farmers. Some of the earliest scouts were Carson and Kellems, and some of the earliest settlers included the Edrington, Driver and Hale families, among others.