Grant's Vicksburg Campaign

The 1863 maneuver, county road by county road

Drive: Loop from Vicksburg
Distance: ~165 miles
Time: 1–2 days
Highways: US 61 · MS 552 · MS 27 · US 80
Avoids: I-20
Region: Deep South

April–July 1863: Grant crosses the Mississippi below Vicksburg, cuts loose from his supply line, wins five battles in eighteen days, and locks the 'Gibraltar of the Confederacy' into the siege that splits the South. You can drive the whole campaign in a weekend on roads that have barely changed — this loop and the Blues Highway braid together on US 61, drawn side by side on the map.

📍 Mississippi's Vicksburg Campaign Trail markers dot every county road on this loop; the NPS campaign app narrates them.

The drive, segment by segment

The Crossing

Vicksburg → Port Gibson · ~45 mi

Down the bluffs past Grand Gulf's silenced forts to Bruinsburg, where 17,000 men crossed unopposed on April 30, 1863 — then the midnight shots at the Shaifer House that opened the campaign.

⚔️Vicksburg National Military Park — Vicksburg
A 16-mile avenue through 1,400 monuments to the 47-day siege that ended July 4, 1863 — a holiday Vicksburg kept at arm's length for generations. The USS Cairo, first ship ever sunk by an electrically detonated mine, was raised from the Yazoo a century later and sits under canopy with her boilers bare.
🏛️Old Court House Museum — Vicksburg
The 1858 courthouse where the Stars and Stripes went up on July 4th — now a gloriously eccentric museum of everything Warren County ever saved.
⚔️Grand Gulf Military Park — Port Gibson
The river forts Grant's gunboats couldn't silence (forcing the crossing farther south) — now a moody park of earthworks, a ghost town's relics and a submerged past.
⚔️Bruinsburg Landing — Lorman
Where the army came ashore unopposed — often called the largest American amphibious operation before D-Day. Today: a gravel road, a marker, the river. Grant wrote that he felt 'a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since.'
⚔️Shaifer House — Port Gibson
Midnight, May 1: the first shots of the Battle of Port Gibson cracked past this clapboard house while the family fled with the laundry. It still stands on the old sunken road.

The Inland March

Port Gibson → Jackson · ~50 mi

Through Raymond's preserved field (May 12) to Jackson, taken May 14 and burned so thoroughly it earned the name 'Chimneyville.'

⚔️Raymond Battlefield — Raymond
May 12: walking trails over a beautifully preserved field. In town, the courthouse and St. Mark's Episcopal served as hospitals — the pew bloodstains never fully sanded out.
🏛️Old Capitol & Two Museums — Jackson
The 1839 Old Capitol survived 'Chimneyville'; pair it with the superb twin Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum next door — the state's whole arc in one block.

The Decisive Fields

Jackson → Vicksburg · ~35 mi

Champion Hill — 'the hill of death,' the battle that decided the campaign — then the Big Black River rout, and back into the siege lines at Vicksburg for the climax.

⚔️Champion Hill — Edwards
May 16, 1863 — the decisive battle of the campaign, fought over a hill that changed hands three times. Almost unvisited: country roads, markers, wind in the cedars. Download the map first; there's no gate, no fee, no crowd.
⚔️Big Black River Bridge — Edwards
May 17: the bridgehead collapse that penned Pemberton's army into Vicksburg. The railroad trestle site is a quiet pull-off where the campaign's field phase ended.

Worth a detour

Windsor Ruins — Grant's columns marched past the mansion whose own columns now stand alone — shared with the Blues Highway.
Rocky Springs (Trace MP 54.8) — The army camped along the old Trace itself; the ghost town remembers.
Grant's Canal, Delta LA — Across the river: the remnant ditch of Grant's failed attempt to bypass Vicksburg by digging.