Town of the Week

Hazelhurst, Mississippi
May 27, 2000

Head over to Hazelhurst, Mississippi; just listen in.

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The sweet aroma of azaleas and magnolia blossoms wafts lazily over this week's southern town. One-hundred-fifty-year-old oak trees and towering pines shade the stately homes of Hazlehurst, Mississippi. The town is the geographic and economic center of Copiah County, a Native American name meaning screaming owl. It's located about 35 miles south of the state capitol of Jackson.

Back in the spring of 1858, the last spike completing the construction of the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad, was driven and prosperity arrived at the village doorstep. Seven years later, the city of Hazlehurst was founded by George Hazlehurst, its chief engineer. He went on to found another Hazlehurst across the border in Georgia.

Hazlehurst is the setting for Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Crimes of the Heart. It is also the birthplace of legendary blues man Robert Johnson. The town is just 10 miles from the Copiah-Lincoln Community College. Hazlehurst is known throughout the region for the training it gives to the blind. With all those trees in town, lumbering and wood processing still is a key economic commodity. A community of four thousand people, and home of the high school Indians, this is our Town of the Week, Hazlehurst, Mississippi.