Hermanville, Mississippi

Hermanville is an unincorporated community in Claiborne County, in southwest Mississippi, United States.[1] Its ZIP code is 39086.[2]

Hermanville, Mississippi
Unincorporated community
Hermanville Show map of Mississippi Hermanville Show map of the United States
Coordinates: 31°57′34″N 90°50′24″W
Country	United States
State	Mississippi
County	Claiborne
Elevation	167 ft (51 m)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP code	39086
Area code(s)	601 & 769
GNIS feature ID	671128[1]

History

Hermanville was established on March 15, 1886.[3] The town's economy was based on cotton, cattle, and timber products.[4]

The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany was built in Hermanville in 1887. By 1982, the congregation had become inactive as population decreased. In 1985 the building was moved to the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum in Jackson, where it is used as a chapel.[5]

The Natchez, Jackson and Columbus Railroad was completed in 1882, and a depot was established in Hermanville. Known locally as "The Little J", the line ran between the state capital of Jackson and Natchez. It had various owners; the last was the Illinois Central Railroad, which abandoned the line in railroad industry restructuring between 1979 and 1981.[6][7]

During the early 1960s, a lumber mill in Hermanville was producing 10,000,000 board feet (24,000 m³) of high-quality southern pine annually.[7]

The Pink Palace in Hermanville was described in 2000 as "probably the most photogenic juke joint in Mississippi".[8] The building was constructed of three side-by-side mobile homes with their common walls removed. The inside walls were painted in folk art.[8]

Author Nevada Barr wrote of Hermanville in 2000:

The town, if such a humble scatter of buildings around a crossroads and a single-room post office could be called a town, embodied the Northerner's view of the "real" Mississippi. The gracious homes of Natchez were not in evidence, nor was the classic architecture...seen in Port Gibson and the city of Clinton. Trailer houses and shacks sat at odd angles to the two-lane road as if they had fallen haphazardly from a passing cargo plane.[9]

Education

Hermanville is served by the Claiborne County School District.

Notable people

• Maxwell Bodenheim, Jazz Age poet and novelist known as the "King of Greenwich Village Bohemians".

References

1. "Hermanville, Mississippi". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
2. United States Postal Service (2012). "USPS - Look Up a ZIP Code". Retrieved 2012-02-15.
3. Laws of the State of Mississippi. R.H. Henry, State Printer. 1886.
4. Wyatt, Dorothy M. (2005). The Planted Seed. Organizational Desktop.
5. Pace, Sherry (2007). Historic Churches of Mississippi. University Press of Mississippi.
6. Hoffman, Gil. "Natchez, Jackson & Columbus Railroad". Mississippi Rails.
7. Soil survey: Clairborne County Mississippi. United States Department of Agriculture. July 1963.
8. "Juke Joint Photographs". John L. Doughty, Jr. 2000. Archived from the original on 2013-09-05.
9. Barr, Nevada Barr (2000). Deep South. Berkley.

Further reading

• World of Decay Photographs and a description of Hermanville from 2010