Map of Winona city, Mississippi

Winona is a city in Montgomery County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 5,043 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Montgomery County. Winona is known in the local area as “The Crossroads of North Mississippi”; the intersection of U.S. Interstate 55 and U.S. Highways 51 and 82 were constructed here.

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History

Middleton

Middleton, Mississippi was a town that developed in the 19th century two miles west of Winona’s site. Some locals consider it the predecessor to Winona. After the railroad was built to the east of Middleton, development shifted to what became Winona, bypassing Middleton.

Winona

The first European-American settler in the area, which was originally part of Carroll County, was Colonel O.J. Moore, who arrived from Virginia in 1848. He agreed to the railroad being constructed through his property, and a station was built in 1860 near his plantation home.

As a result of the railroad line and station being built here rather than Middleton, Winona was founded and began to grow. The railroad attracted business, which developed around the station as Moore sold off some property. Winona was incorporated as a town on May 2, 1861. Settlers were attracted because of the railroad access, and Winona became a busy trading town.

Captain William Witty, an early settler from North Carolina, was for years a leading Winona merchant and established the first bank in the county. Other names of early settlers were: Curtis, Burton, Palmer, Spivey, Townsend, Hart, Turner and Campbell. The early businesses were mainly grocery stores.

In 1871, the Reconstruction-era state legislature organized Montgomery County from portions of Carroll and other counties, and Winona was designated as its county seat. A yellow fever epidemic struck the area in 1878, and resulted in the deaths of many residents. Some people left the town in an effort to outrun the epidemic, which spread with river passengers throughout the waterways of the Mississippi Delta and nearby counties.

In April 1888, a great fire destroyed almost the entire business section of the town. Forty of the 50 businesses burned. In 1890 the state passed a new constitution that effectively disenfranchised most blacks, excluding them from the political system. In addition, Jim Crow laws were passed imposing second-class status on them, a condition enforced by whites for decades.

20th century to present

Following their service in World War II, many African Americans began to press to regain their constitutional rights. Activism increased in the South into the 1950s and 1960s.

Many whites in Winona and elsewhere in Mississippi opposed such changes. In 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer and other state activists stopped to eat in Winona on their way to a literacy workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. On June 9, 1963, Hamer and the other activists stopped again in Winona on their return. The group was arrested on a false charge and jailed by white policemen. Once in jail, Hamer and her colleagues were, per orders of local law officers, beaten savagely by inmates of the Montgomery County jail, almost to the point of death.

While touring the country in this period, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), made a stop in Winona. He was ambushed by local barber Ryan Lynch, an outspoken white supremacist. King was saved by his assigned bodyguard, a local police officer named Garrit Howard.

In 1996, the owner of the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Bertha Tardy, and three employees of the store were found fatally shot. Curtis Flowers was arrested in January 1997 and charged with four counts of capital murder. Flowers was tried a total of six times, and in 2020, the Office of the Attorney General filed a motion to dismiss the charges.

2023 tornado

On Friday, March 24, 2023, just after 930 p.m. CDT, Winona was struck and heavily damaged by a large and destructive EF3 tornado that caused three deaths.

Winona Road Map

Winona city Satellite Map

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 13.1 square miles (34 km), of which 13.1 square miles (34 km) is land and 0.04 square miles (0.10 km) (0.31%) is water.

Climate

See also