Fourty-four Vicksburg Junior High School students took a trip to downtown Vicksburg to visit various local attractions including Jacqueline House, Old Courthouse Museum, Coca Cola Museum, The Attic Gallery and Vicksburg Riverwalk Murals.

Trip coordinator Mary Ann Peoples said to be eligible to go on the downtown walking tour the students had to meet their goals for accelerated reader points for the third nine weeks.

The goals is different for each individual student, Peoples said.

“Just to give you an overall view, as a school they’ve read over eight million words this school term,” she said. “It’s astounding.”
This is their reward for meeting their goals, Peoples said.

“I wanted something that covered all subjects since their reading covers all areas,” she said. “They also need to know about Vicksburg.”

Peoples said what she found was even though her students lived in Vicksburg, they did not know about many of the destinations they visited on their field trip.

“A lot of these places were new experiences for them,” she said. “It’s good to familiarize them with their town and its history.”

Eighth-grader Zion Jones, 14, said she liked the Coca Cola Museum.

“It had different bottles from the ‘90s and back in the old days,” she said.

Jones said she bought a drink from the museum, which was her first Coke from a glass bottle.

“I liked learning about the different shapes and sizes of the bottles and the different colors,” she said.

Jones said she liked the field trip because she learned about several places in Vicksburg she didn’t know were there. The Old Courthouse Museum was the only place on the agenda Jones had been to she said.

Seventh-grader Kristina Tillett, 13, said her favorite place was the community garden.

“They talked about how they were going to plant this huge garden, and it was going to be free for people to come and pick for their families because some people can’t afford it with high prices,” she said. “She talked about how some kids were going to come sell watermelons because they need money. I think it’s really sweet to do that.”

Tillett said she learned a lot from the downtown walking tour and she had never been to any of the places before.

“We get to go to all different places and all different museums and it’s cool to learn about stuff,” she said. “A lot of these places I didn’t know were here.”

Tillett said she would definitely be going back to visit some of the locations on the tour.