Stafford Springs, Mississippi is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

located in Jasper County,

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

, United States, along

U.S. Route 11 U.S. Route 11 or U.S. Highway 11 (US 11) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway extending across the eastern U.S. The southern terminus of the route is at US 90 in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refu ...

History

The community was named for Edward Stafford, who settled in the area in the late 19th century. Stafford was alerted to the presence of a mineral spring in the area by

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

s, who took their wounded and sick there for its purported healing powers. On May 19, 1892, the Stafford Mineral Springs and Hotel Company was organized in

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

. A bottling works was founded the next year and the spring water was soon shipped throughout the country. The Stafford Springs Hotel opened in 1899. The shareholders sold the company in 1918, and visitors stopped arriving to the springs during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. The hotel continued to be opened yearly from April to September. In 1952, the Stafford Springs Hotel was demolished. The area was then briefly used for a

dude ranch A guest ranch, also known as a dude ranch, is a type of ranch oriented towards visitors or tourism. It is considered a form of agrotourism. History Guest ranches arose in response to the romanticization of the American West that began to occur ...

. The Mississippi Art Colony was located in Stafford Springs from 1962 to 1970. A post office operated under the name Stafford Springs from 1919 to 1955.

References

External links

Postcard of the Stafford Springs Hotel from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Unincorporated communities in Jasper County, Mississippi Unincorporated communities in Mississippi {{JasperCountyMS-geo-stub