Turkey Creek History
For these and other reasons, neither World War II nor postwar growth in the Gulfport area affected Turkey Creek as adversely as they did the neighboring black communities of Corrolton and North Gulfport. After wartime expansion of Gulfport Field completely erased Corrolton from the postwar map, the re-routing of a new and wider Highway 49 carved North Gulfport in half. Enabling the creation of the affluent Bayou View community on one hand, and spurring the growth of suburban Orange Grove on the other, these mid-century public works projects entailed both eminent domain and African-American dislocation, yet left Turkey Creek unscathed. Although postwar growth in transportation, aviation, and commerce, etc. brought dramatic change to the Gulfport area, Turkey Creek’s cultural heritage and physical appearance proved remarkably resilient. Even well after the US Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown Decision, neighborhood children attended classes, lunch and recess on the very same school grounds as their forebears.
Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, Turkey Creek’s land use, folkways, community institutions, and architecture remained remarkably true to earlier times. Because land was security passed from one generation to the next, descendents of earlier settlers held tight to the long, narrow lots extending south from Rippy Road to the creek and beyond. On their land they raised hogs, chickens, goats, vegetables, fruit and so forth, as well as plenty of children for whom the woods were an endless wonder. Important community fixtures like the Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church and the Turkey Creek ball diamond, as well as several “jukes”, stores and other small businesses, further defined and preserved the settlement’s distinct, local flavor. Plenty of wood- framed bungalows and “shotgun” houses still spoke, through their materials, style and construction, of the enduring legacy of earlier occupants.
