Rich, Coahoma County

Slow down after you pass over the Yazoo Pass bridge on Highway 315 if you are heading east from 61.  Look to your right and you will see the road leading to Rich.  That is the only way to get to Rich today from Lula because the bridge was taken out when they moved the highway over to cross on a new bridge.

Rich was founded in 1888 around the store and post office of the Richberg family and along the railroad constructed by the Mobile and Northwestern.  In 1920, it had a population of about 200. As a child, I remember several stores being open and some very nice houses in this small community.  It was not an incorporated town, but it was a close knit place.  Mrs. Garrison ran a small store where the post office was located.  That building still remains but her store has been closed for years. An old service station was right across from her.  There was a cotton gin on the other side of the tracks.  I was always told that a wooden building behind Mrs. Garrison’s store was an old movie theatre long closed.

Several stately mansions graced Rich harkening back to a time when Rich really was rich.  Most of these things are gone today, but their memory remains.

Thomas Harris, the famous writer of Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and several other books is from Rich.

I knew his mother who lived in a home in Rich.  I was always told that Thomas Harris wrote many of his novels in this small house next to his Mothers.  Not sure if that is completely true, but when I pass this home, I always imagine those wild stories being written there.

Fond memories of Rich.