The Natchez people lived on these bluffs for centuries before the French arrived. In 1719, the French built Fort St. Pierre on the high ground overlooking the Mississippi — the strategic chokepoint that would define the city's fate. The Spanish took it, the British took it, and after the American Revolution, Newit Vick bought a thousand acres on the bluffs in 1812 and laid out the town that bears his name. Vicksburg became a cotton port, a railroad junction, and the most fortified city on the river. Then came the siege. For 47 days in the summer of 1863, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant encircled the city while 30,000 Confederate soldiers and the entire civilian population sheltered in caves dug into the loess hillsides. The city surrendered on July 4th. Vicksburg did not celebrate Independence Day again for 81 years. Today the 1,800-acre National Military Park preserves the battlefield as sacred ground — 1,400 monuments stand where men fought and died for control of the Mississippi River.