U. S. Department of Agriculture representative Ruthie Jackson looks out onto the Dillon Plantation during a bus tour of the Civil War site Thursday on Old Port Gibson Road near Raymond. Union Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, while encamped on the property in 1863, made the fateful decision to attack Jackson before proceeding to Vicksburg. The land was transferred from the U.S.D.A. to the Natchez Trace Parkway of the National Park Service Thursday. (C. TODD SHERMANThe Vicksburg Post)

RAYMOND Land where Gen. Ulysses S. Grant is said to have made a key decision in the Vicksburg campaign will become part of the Natchez Trace Parkway.

The announcement was made Thursday morning when about 50 people, including National Park Service Director Fran P. Mainella and Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Administration Lou Gallegos, gathered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church next door to the courthouse here.

The 470 acres that were transferred from one federal agency to the other is between Raymond and Utica in Hinds County.

“We couldn’t pass it on to better hands, couldn’t pass it on to a better state, couldn’t pass it on to a better community,” Gallegos said of the USDA’s transfer to the Department of the Interior.

Grant is said to have decided while his troops were on the land in 1863 to move, as he did, toward Jackson first instead of directly towards Vicksburg. The Union Army had crossed the Mississippi River at Bruinsburg, west of Port Gibson, and was making its way to the war’s decisive battle at Vicksburg.

The agriculture department’s Farm Service Agency foreclosed on the land in 2000, Farm Service administrator James Little said. It was saved from a possible sale, though, when the FSA learned of the historic events that had occurred on it.

“It was a ranch and a farm,” Little said, adding that the land produced row crops, cotton and hay and was also used for raising cattle. “We had put it up for auction. There was no interest (from outside bidders in purchasing the land).”

Officials at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History helped lead to the transfer instead of the land’s potential sale. Historic-preservation law requires them to review such potential sales as the auction of the Dillon land.

“We review thousands of them a year,” Department of Archives and History battlefield historian Jim Woodrick said of such potential transactions. “A member of our staff, Scott McCoy, who was familiar with the Vicksburg campaign, noticed that it was on the trail Grant used. At the same time, (Vicksburg National Military Park historian Terry Winschel) had made note of the transaction and was working on the same goal, but on a different track.”

“This is not a cost to society; it is an investment in the future,” said John L. Nau III, chairman of the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. “Students and citizens will be able to go visit and touch” the site of the key tactical decision of perhaps the pivotal campaign of the Civil War, he said.

The transferred property was already bisected by the Natchez Trace Parkway. It includes the Dean’s Stand pullover from the parkway and part of Port Gibson-Raymond Road.

“We have seen visitation go up, particularly in the areas that tell the story about America,” Mainella said of the National Park Service since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She and other speakers at the ceremony stressed the importance of the transfer as an added attraction for the area’s tourism industry. More than 1 million people visit Vicksburg National Military Park each year.

The 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway runs from Nashville to Natchez. National Park Service officials said it would be several years before the site would be open to the public as an interpretive historical site. An archeological survey and then a Cultural Landscape Report will be required first.

“The core decision of the campaign was made at that point,” said Vicksburg author Warren Grabau, author of the campaign history “Ninety-Eight Days,” of the newly preserved headquarters site.

Union forces crossed the Mississippi River near Port Gibson and were moving towards the rail line between Vicksburg and Jackson. Grant’s plan was to turn towards Vicksburg when he made the decision to head towards Jackson instead.

“The acquisition of Dillon’s Plantation is a major step,” said retired Brig. Gen. Parker Hills, chairman of the Friends of the Vicksburg Campaign, whose goal is to preserve as much of Grant’s route as possible as part of the state’s Civil War Trails project.