When I was a kid growing up in Pascagoula, adventure started in my backyard. My best friend and I would lug an old aluminum boat down to the water, haul out a car battery to hook up the trolling motor, and pack snacks, Cokes, and whatever else we could scrounge out of the cabinets into a bag. The plan—at least at first—was always to make it all the way to Round Island, that mysterious speck on the horizon that seemed impossibly far away to two kids in a twelve-foot boat
But before long we realized Round Island was a bit too ambitious, so we’d set our sights closer—to Greenwood Island. Though “island” might be a generous term, Greenwood felt enough like an escape. Just across the channel, it was a patch of marsh and trees where the city noise faded, and all that mattered was the hum of the motor and the smell of salt in the air. Sometimes we’d even try to swim from the Pascagoula Yacht Club, just to prove we could make it.
We didn’t know it then, but the muddy shore we treated like our own secret hideout held stories much older than ours—artifacts buried in the sand that trace back thousands of years, to some of the earliest people who ever lived along the Gulf Coast. What felt like freedom to us as kids was, in a way, a return to a place that’s always drawn people in.
The Island Beneath the Island
Archaeologists later found that Greenwood Island was a settlement site as early as 1000 B.C., marked by fragments of pottery tempered with plant fibers—a hallmark of the earliest pottery traditions on the Mississippi coast. (LostWorlds.org) Later, Woodland-period and Mississippian peoples returned, leaving more elaborate ceramics, tools, and cooking pits. The site—listed in state records as 22JA516—became a key to understanding how coastal Mississippi linked to other cultures across Gulf and inland river systems. (Mississippi Department of Archives and History)
Then came another era of habitation: during the Mexican-American War, U.S. soldiers recuperated in a temporary hospital camp built on Greenwood Island, known as Camp Jefferson Davis (or Camp Lawson). (Historical Archaeology Journal) When disease swept through, the island became a burial ground. Over the following century, the combination of hurricanes, ship wakes, and industrial dredging eroded the island’s edges. Locals began to find fragments of old wooden coffins washing up—mute reminders of the lives once laid to rest there.
When the Past Literally Surfaced
By the early 2000s, the shoreline had receded so much that human remains were being exposed. Archaeologists and volunteers from the University of Southern Mississippi carefully recovered what they could before the river claimed more. In 2010, some of the soldiers’ remains were reinterred with full military honors at the Biloxi National Cemetery—closing a chapter that had been unintentionally reopened by time and tide. (Historical Archaeology Journal)
For longtime Pascagoula residents, the news stirred something deeper than curiosity. Greenwood Island had always been part of the background—something glimpsed from a boat or over a pier—but learning it had once been both a thriving Indigenous site and a military burial ground transformed it from a patch of wild land into something sacred.
Memory, Rediscovery, and Reverence
The island’s story reshaped how people saw their hometown. What was once a place for fishing, exploring, or dredging was suddenly layered with reverence and unease. It reminded many locals that history isn’t always safely buried beneath the ground—it rises and falls with the tide. Every storm, every new dredging project, risks uncovering another chapter of Pascagoula’s past. (MDAH Archaeological Report 37)
Today, Greenwood Island is part of an environmental restoration and dredged-material containment effort—a mix of engineering and ecology meant to rebuild marsh habitat while managing the work of keeping the Pascagoula ship channel clear. The island has grown and changed shape over the years, stitched together with rock dikes and sediment. But even in its re-engineered form, it carries both visible and invisible history: the story of human persistence, loss, and connection to the water that defines this coast.
For me, that makes those childhood trips mean something new. We weren’t just chasing freedom—we were unknowingly following ancient routes, touching the edges of a story far older and more fragile than we could have imagined.
References
- Daniels, Gary C. “Native American artifacts on Pascagoula’s Greenwood Island date to 1000 B.C.” Lost Worlds of South Carolina, Sept 9 2009.
- Lewis, R. Barry et al. Archaeological Investigations of Coastal Mississippi: Archaeological Report No. 37. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 2015.
- Danforth, M. E., Funkhouser, J. L. & Martin, D. C. “The United States–Mexican War Soldiers of Greenwood Island, Mississippi: An Historical, Archaeological, and Bioarchaeological Analysis.” Historical Archaeology, Vol 50 (2016), pp 92–114.
- Wikipedia. “Round Island (Mississippi).” Accessed 2025.
