Tishomingo State Park

This rural enclave offers visitors what a poet might describe as an "antediluvian" landscape. It is certainly the most dramatic ground among the ten Great Depression–era park sites developed in Mississippi by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Covering some 1,200 acres, the setting includes cyclopean rock outcroppings, deep ravines, and meandering Bear Creek, as well as manmade Haynes Lake. The CCC built a dam for the lake and added roads, walking trails, and every manner of stone construction: retaining walls, culverts, planters, paths, steps, seating, and water fountains. The buildings are also diverse, including a two-story former park office. There are six cabins near a suspension bridge over the creek, along with a lodge, two pavilions, a swimming pool, and bathhouse, with six group cabins nearby; and in a recreation area to the west around the lake there are two more pavilions, a bathhouse, two comfort stations, and a ranger station. An additional lodge and six group cabins were built around 1970. Building wall construction is typically stone, with rough-hewn timbers inserted for columns, beams, and window lintels, producing the rusticity for which CCC parks are well known. The group cabins have low stone foundation walls and stone fireboxes, mantels, and chimneys, but are otherwise wood-frame construction. The suspension bridge is particularly notable, with stone steps leading to its wood-plank span, which is supported by steel cables carried atop stone towers—altogether something of a miniature Brooklyn Bridge.