In 1876, the Mississippi River did what rivers do — it found a shorter path. A cutoff during a spring flood rerouted the main channel west, leaving Vicksburg stranded on a stagnant oxbow lake. The city that controlled the river no longer touched it. Commerce collapsed. Steamboats passed miles away. For 27 years, the 'Key to the South' was landlocked. Then the Army Corps of Engineers executed one of the boldest hydrological interventions in American history: they diverted the Yazoo River south through the old Mississippi riverbed, carving a new channel right through downtown. In 1903, Vicksburg declared itself a river city again. The Yazoo Diversion Canal runs through the heart of the city today — its floodwall covered in murals that tell the story of a place that refused to die when the river left.
