There were several plank roads built out of Memphis in the 1850s; in addition to the roads to Mississippi there were roads to Big Creek and Raleigh in
Shelby County, and LaGrange in
Fayette County, Tennessee. In August 1851, Thomas Peters and slave trader
Byrd Hill advertised that they sought to
hire out between 50 and 100 enslaved male laborers to build the road. According to a 1921 reminiscence by a longtime citizen of
White Haven, Tennessee, the road was "constructed by grading the roadbed and laying two and one-half-inch oak planks on stringers of timber laid flush with the roadbed. It made an excellent highway and made hauling and travel easy." Col. Charles Edward Ware may have been surveyor and contractor for both the Hernando and Pigeon Roost roads. Polly Turner Cancer of
Marshall County, Mississippi told a
WPA Slave Narratives recorder that the plank roads to Memphis had been considered dangerous places, known to be frequented by bandits: "In dose days hit was dang'us to travel 'cause dere was so many robbers 'festin' de roads; when de folks was fixin' to go to Memphis dey wud all go in gangs; dey wud meet at de Ferry at
Wyatt an' go togedder; dey wud all have fierce dogs an' guns; Marster wud tell 'bout ridin' on de Plank Roads to Memphis." The opening of the
Tennessee and Mississippi Railroad train station in Hernando in 1856 significantly cut into the plank road's revenues. During the American Civil War, the death of a civilian named William H. White who lived along the Memphis and Hernando plank road led to an exchange of tersely worded letters between U.S. Army General
William T. Sherman and the Confederate Army commander in Mississippi
J. C. Pemberton. According to a
WPA-produced history of
DeSoto County, Mississippi,
Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men rode the plank road into Memphis at the time of their
infamous 1864 raid. through
Panola and
Hernando to
Grenada north The present-day
Interstate 55 follows the same route as the old Memphis to Hernando plank road. == See also ==