Hunters and owners are just fine knowing the river and development has passed Davis Island by

The floodwall in Vicksburg serves a dual purpose: On the west side, its rough concrete walls protect the city from the uncertainty of the Mississippi River, but on the east side, the wall is home to more than 30 murals chronicling the city’s crucial past, present and future roles in American history, commerce, culture, religion and technology.

One scene in particular depicts Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina pruning roses on the lawn at Brierfield one February day in 1861, when a messenger arrived to inform Davis that he had been elected as the first president of the Confederate States of America.

“They actually rode through the backyard of my camp to tell him he had been elected president of the Confederacy,” said Buddy Ball, of Alexandria, La., who has made a hobby of learning everything there is to know about the land. “I think I’ve got everything that anybody’s got all in one place.”

Ball said the land, now known as Davis Island, was once a peninsula of Mississippi, then called Davis Bend. Two years after the Civil War, in 1867, the Mississippi River took a shortcut, severing the peninsula and turning it into Davis Island.

Brierfield, the Davis’ home, was located on Davis Bend, an 11,000-acre peninsula of rich bottomlands, bounded on three sides by the Mississippi River, said Brian Hamilton, a Ph.D. candidate in the history department of the University of Wisconsin studying 19th century U.S. political and cultural history.

Hamilton explained Davis Bend was where the Davis family made its fortunes, along with others who lived and farmed there: Davis’ brother Joseph Davis, Joseph Emory and Mississippi Governor John A. Quitman.

 

Cotton is king

It was actually Davis’ brother Joseph who began developing land on the bend, and gave some to his much younger brother Jefferson.

“Joseph already had a successful law practice in Natchez, and as many wealthy, upwardly mobile Americans would have done at the time, he looked for a way to turn their income into expanded profit, and he turned to land,” Hamilton said. “Recent historian of the lower Mississippi Walter Johnson, a scholar at Harvard, has called this place home to the biggest economic boom the world has ever seen.”

That boom, of course, came in the form of cotton.

“He had no training as a planter or no experience in cotton, but it seems that wasn’t necessarily a prerequisite to getting into this game back then,” Hamilton said.

Davis’ slave plantation was a bit unusual in that he bought into some more abstract ideas at the time that included less discipline and more cooperation.

“Enslaved people when they were seen to violate the rules, they were then brought before a jury of other enslaved people,” Hamilton said. “He was also said to have provided more food and rations than enslaved people usually got. In most cases, enslaved people were given just enough food to survive.”

Hamilton said he’s been told by some today that Joseph Davis’ plantation, Hurricane, was like a paradise for those slaves, which he added wasn’t true.

“It’s important not to say Davis was a more benevolent person or that he was anti-slavery or anything like that, but he was just interested in other ways to motivate people,” he said. “You can motivate people by the lash, or you can motivate people by feeding them more and giving them the sense that they have more of a stake in the operation.”

In general, very wealthy planters like Davis across the south were a very eclectic lot, Hamilton said.

“They’re not mad scientists, but they’re constantly experimenting with different ways to grow crops and different ways to manage people,” he said. “I don’t think Davis is as unusual as we think he is. He, like others, was interested in making as much profit as he could off of the land.”

Near the beginning of the Civil War, Joseph Davis fled, just as many other planters did when the Army came close. Hamilton said Davis Bend was quickly seized by the Navy, which the United States used to its advantage whenever possible.

After the war, one of Davis’ famed slaves, Benjamin Montgomery, continued running the cotton production. Hamilton added it was extremely rare for a slave to be in charge of operations, and legend of Montgomery’s accomplishments seemed to circulate around the South.

“He writes to Joseph Davis who is in exile, and gets Davis to write to then-president Andrew Johnson to return the land to Davis, and it works,” Hamilton said. “You have the brother of the leader of this rebellion against the United States given his land back by the president of the United States. It was a very politically savvy move by Montgomery because by this time Davis turns around and offers the land on a long-term mortgage to Montgomery.”

By the 1870s, it was the third-largest cotton plantation in Mississippi, and their cotton was winning awards all over the country.

Montgomery continued to manage the plantation into the late ’70s when Jefferson Davis began suing to get the plantation back. There is dispute over that claim, about whether or not Joseph Davis had given him the land as a gift, but eventually Jefferson Davis prevailed at the same time the cotton market was bottoming out nationally, and the land was also becoming especially flood prone, largely due to the shift of the Mississippi River and its consequences.

Hamilton said he’s heard claims the river’s change in path was in part due to Ulysses S. Grant.

“Grant built a cutoff because they didn’t want to have to keep going around the bend, so they built a very small canal to Vicksburg, and very soon after the war, the river then decided to choose that canal,” he said. “Grant started something and the river finished it. I certainly know Grant dug a canal, to the degree that that canal was part of the change in the river bed, I don’t know.”

Ball said he’s never heard that claim, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Steamboat companies had also considered, against Joseph Davis’ wishes, to make a shortcut through Davis Bend, which would have saved 19 miles on the trip down the Mississippi River.

“All they were doing was trying to accelerate what was already going to be a natural occurrence,” he said. “It’s a shorter route and every time it would overflow, the channel would get a little deeper. It was going to happen. It wasn’t if it was going to happen, it was when.”

 

An island divided

Though Davis Island lies on the western side of the Mississippi River, most of it belongs to Mississippi, which presents some unique challenges, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said.

“It’s on the Louisiana side of the river, but it’s Warren County, Mississippi,” Pace said. “There’s some farming operation, and there’s some big hunting clubs.”

With the land belonging to Warren County, the island falls under Pace’s jurisdiction.

“Warren County Sheriff’s Office has worked any number of cases, including two death investigations, on Davis Island in the 20 years I’ve been in office,” he said. “Both of which were ruled accidental deaths.”

Pace said his department accesses Davis Island either by taking a patrol boat from LeTourneau across the Mississippi River into the old river cut behind Davis Island to Davis Island Landing or by crossing the bridge into Louisiana and driving south either on the levee or U.S. 65 to reach a private ferry that takes passengers to Davis Island.

“The majority of Davis Island is actually in Warren County because the original river bed runs on the west side of Davis Island, and that was the state line when the constitution was drawn,” he said. “When the river changed course, it left this huge piece of real estate on what is now the west side of the Mississippi River.”

Ball said a small portion of the southeast of the island belongs to Madison Parish.

“Davis Island is part of Davis Bend but through accretions and movements of the river, Madison Parish has now become a part and is now contiguous to the old Davis Bend, and it is now referred to as Davis Island,” he said.

When the river was there, the property lines were designated by the thalweg, or the deepest part of the river, but the only remnants of the old riverbed visible today are two lakes, John Thomas Lake and the Blue Hole.

Once the river abandoned it, there was no distinguishable line, Ball said.

“In 1918, the Madison Parish owners of the island and the Warren County owners of the island said look, ‘We need to decide where our property line is,’” he said.

The property owners mutually hired a surveyor and determined they would agree that wherever he drew the line, they would agree upon it.

“He went to the high bank on the east side and the west side,” Ball said. “He followed the meandering of the river, and that’s how he determined where the property line was. The owners signed off on it.”

Take a look at a U.S. geological map today, and it will show that line, but it will also show there is an indefinite boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi because the boundary was agreed upon by the property owners, but the state of Louisiana and Mississippi have never had a reason to establish a state line, Ball said.

“They didn’t at that time and probably never will,” he said. “The only way that they would ever have to determine exactly where the line is, is if there is some oil and gas discoveries and the states got to arguing over who got the taxes.”

 

Sacrificing the island to the river

Hamilton said when the Army Corps built the levees, they had a discussion about whether or not to try to save the property and they decided it was not worth it.

“It was just a couple of families and there was still some cotton production, but it was nothing substantial, so they built the levees around it which makes it even more prone to flooding,” he said.

The Davis heirs felt the impact of the mighty Mississippi River even before the island’s fate was sealed. In 1922, a flood left Brierfield six feet deep in water.

Jefferson Davis’ descendants raised the mansion up on brick columns, which saved it from the infamous 1927 flood, but not a chance fire in 1931.

The Davis family hung on to the land as a shrine to their forbearers until 1953 when the property was finally sold for use much more compatible with flooding: timber and more notably, hunting.

Today, several exclusive hunting clubs exist on the island — Brierfield, owned by the Dale family; Titanic, owned by the Coca-Cola Biedenharns of Monroe, La.; Rosedale, owned by the Parker group; Palmyra Hunting Club, owned by 20 owners located in various Louisiana cities; and Davis Island Hunting Club, known as Kelloggs, who bought their holdings from Anderson-Tully Lumber Co. of Vicksburg after leasing it from them for 50 years, Ball said.

“Anderson-Tully Lumber Co. owned some 300,000 acres of Mississippi River hardwood bottomland,” he said. “They had their own forester/wildlife biologist and provided guidance and regulations to their clubs concerning hunting activities on their land. They pioneered conservation before Mississippi and Louisiana got as heavily involved as they are today. They are to be commended for their foresight.”

An excerpt of W.F. Bond’s “I Had a Friend,” obtained by Ball, includes the details of the founding of Palmyra Island Hunting and Fishing club 100 years ago in 1916, as told by founding member W.F. Bond, Mississippi State Superintendent of Education.

Bond, along with 79 others, mostly from Jackson, founded the club to hunt wild geese, as they were not able to secure invitations from the prominent goose hunting clubs in Jackson at the time.

“There were more geese, more ducks, more deer, more squirrels, more raccoons, more doves, more quail, more woodcock, more rabbits, more alligators, and more fish on this island than I have ever seen or known of at any other place,” Bond wrote in his 1916 book. “The lakes in the woods, the blue holes, the sloughs, and old bayous were full of fish.”

Bond wrote that the men never hunted on Sunday and always gave thanks when they sat down for a meal. No drinking or bad language was allowed around the clubhouse or on the hunt.

“Sam Robinson, a one-eyed Negro man, and his wife, Florida, did the cooking and waiting on the club members in general,” he wrote.

Ball, a member of Palmyra Hunting Club since 1971, said Davis Island is part of an ecosystem of the Mississippi River bottomlands that extends from above Memphis, Tenn., all the way down to Baton Rouge, La.

“What we have is a true treasure, a wildlife treasure,” he said. “We’ve got cypress trees on Davis Island that were here when Columbus discovered America. It’s not only the historic things, but it’s also the wildlife and the timber. It’s almost like stepping back in time.”

 

A hunter’s paradise, if you 

know the right people

Davis Island has been on a wildlife management program with Mississippi State University since 1997. Since then, the Mississippi Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has also become a partner.

“In fact, Davis Island is probably the longest ongoing wildlife whitetail deer study in the United States. It continues today,” Ball said. “When we first started getting on the wildlife program, the biologists told us we needed to hammer down the deer population by 100 to 125 doe.”

Ball said he’d been a hunter his whole life, mostly in areas where deer were a lot more scarce, and hearing that went against everything he previously knew.

“They finally convinced us we needed to do it, and after we hammered them down for about three years and got the herd down to a more manageable carrying capacity for our lands, the weights on the does jumped 20 pounds, and the weights on the bucks jumped 30 because they were now getting enough nutrients,” he said. “They evaluate our herd every year and give us recommendations on what to take off. Everybody on the island is under the program. It’s not just us. That’s the great thing about it. We are all on the program. It’s really paid off.”

Wyatt Adams of Bossier City, La., bought into the Palmyra Hunting Club in 2003.

“Over the last 12 years, I think I’ve personally killed 15-plus deer that scored over 150 inches. I don’t know of another place in the southeast U.S. that you can do that, and I’ve hunted a lot of good places,” he said. “From a consistency standpoint, they’re more consistent with really great deer than any other place.”

The island is home to deer, ducks, turkey, squirrels, frogs, doves, bears, fish, alligators and eagles.

Ball said Davis Island is home to one of the 30-something eagle nests in Mississippi, which has successfully hatched 10 of the last 11 years.

In August 2015, a Mississippi record-breaking alligator measuring 14.25 feet and weighing 826 pounds was harvested at Davis Island.

Adams said he’s primarily interested in hunting deer, but there is prime duck hunting and fishing on the island as well.

The island has a reputation for being exclusive, and a search of the hunting clubs turns up no websites, phone numbers or addresses.

“When I was wanting to try to buy in, there was no listing,” Adams said. “It’s always been done by word of mouth, who’s friends and through people already on the island. That’s probably where the exclusiveness comes in. It’s like if you’re an outsider, and you’re not inside with the group, you don’t have a chance to buy into the group because you can’t even get to the right person or the information.”

The exclusiveness may also have something to do with the price tag.

“The share I just sold, I sold it for $800,000, but the next one may sell for $700,000 or it may sell for $1 million,” he said. “There’s a couple of shares for sale that I think they’ve been asking $950,000 for them.”

Adams currently has another share with a campsite available for $1.35 million. He said he’s the first person he knows of to publicly list a share for sale.

Kellogg shares run about $300,000; Brierfield shares anywhere from $650,000 to $700,000, Adams said. Hurricane, owned by the Biedenharn family, who first bottled Coca Cola, doesn’t sell shares, and Rosedale sells leases, not shares.

Adams said the majority of the members in Palmyra are doctors, attorneys and business professionals from Monroe, La., and Alexandria, La.

“The Palmyra share entitles you to one membership in the hunting and fishing club, but they still have to vote you in,” he said. “You’ll do a sale on the share, but it’s contingent on you getting voted into the hunting and fishing club. You don’t close the sale until you’ve been voted in.”

Adams said he doesn’t know of anyone who has ever not been voted in, except for in a case where a rule was made that no more than two shares can belong to any immediate family. Additional shares mean more rights to the property.

“If you want to bring more people to hunt, you’ve got to have two shares to do that,” he said. “You can bring five total guests, and of those guests, only two can be hunting guests and three have to be house guests.”

Other rules include only taking one deer that’s nine point or better and two eight points per membership per year and aging the deer to let them get four or five years old at minimum.

For Adams, the price tag was worth it, considering what he was getting for his money.

“When you buy in, each share in Palmyra is allocated 335 acres of undivided ownership,” he said. “When I bought in, I couldn’t afford to buy 3,000 acres, but I was able to spend the money like I was buying 300 acres, but have access to 7,000 acres. It was a great deal for me. You own the land, the timber, the minerals and all of that with that share. If you sold it for $800,000, that’s about $2,500 an acre.”

In the next five years, $2-3 million in timber will likely be harvested from the land, Adams said.

“When you sell timber, the money goes into the land company account, and you vote on what to do with the money,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll fix roads, sometimes they’ll put it back into the property, and sometimes they’ll pay out a small dividend, but it’s never been more than three or four thousand dollars.”

To promote unity on the island, Ball started an island-wide barbecue in 1992.

“I invited all the clubs to come and we had a big barbecue and all of the committees of the various hunting clubs met and since then it’s rotated around,” he said.

The clubs rotate hosting the annual event each year, and Ball said it’s turned out to be extremely successful.

“Everybody tries to outdo the other. They always have some kind of show, an air show or a historical presentation,” he said. “You meet and you talk and if you’ve got a common problem — someone poached or someone crossed a line — you don’t get all upset about it, you sit down and talk about it. It has really developed into a great event, and the camaraderie is worth talking about and worth perpetuating.”

 

Davis Island history 

isn’t forgotten

Though hunting prevails as the island’s main attraction, Adams said the history has not been forgotten.

“There’s still home sites all over the island, and slave levees that they used to protect the farmers’ fields,” he said. “It’s pretty neat from a history standpoint.”

Adams said the value now lies in the recreation.

“I bought in for the recreation standpoint,” he said. “People pay to get in and spend that kind of money because of quality of wildlife on the island. It’s not really the history. As great as the history is, that’s not what has driven the price up on the property and the shares like it is today.”

Hamilton said it’s unusual that Davis Island isn’t commemorated in some way.

“That’s strange to some people given its great importance to the South and the United States as a whole,” he said. “What I heard often was that the South lost the war, but there’s plenty of commemorating of the Confederacy that happens.”

Hamilton suggests the land’s proximity to the Mississippi River, the very reason the Davis family settled there, is one of the main reasons the island isn’t the tourist destination many other Confederate landmarks have become.

“It’s a history of private land owning that really prevails here,” he said. “It’s the hunting that hid the history more than anything. That’s not a bad thing, I think that’s just a better explanation than the South lost the war.”