Itta Bena, Mississippi
| Itta Bena, Mississippi | |
|---|---|
| City | |
Home in the Woods
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 Location of Itta Bena, Mississippi |
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 Itta Bena, Mississippi
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| Coordinates: 33°29′45″N 90°19′20″W / 33.49583°N 90.32222°WCoordinates: 33°29′45″N 90°19′20″W / 33.49583°N 90.32222°W | |
| Country |
 United States
|
| State |
 Mississippi
|
| County | Leflore |
| Government | |
| • Mayor | Thelma Collins |
| Area | |
| • Total | 1.5 sq mi (3.8 km2) |
| • Land | 1.4 sq mi (3.7 km2) |
| • Water | 0.0 sq mi (0.1 km2) |
| Elevation | 131 ft (40 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 2,049 |
| • Density | 1,541.5/sq mi (595.2/km2) |
| Time zone | Central (CST) (UTC-6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| ZIP code | 38941 |
| Area code(s) | 662 |
| FIPS code | 28-35260 |
| GNIS feature ID | 0671749 |
Itta Bena is a city in Leflore County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 2,049 at the 2010 census. The town's name is derived from the Choctaw phrase iti bina, meaning "forest camp". Itta Bena is part of the Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area.
Choctaw Indians occupied the Delta region prior to the arrival of European settlers. The first removal treaty carried out under the Indian Removal Act was the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded about 11 million acres of the Choctaw Nation (now Mississippi) in exchange for about 15 million acres in Oklahoma.
Benjamin Grubb Humphreys, a state senator from Claiborne County, Mississippi, is credited with the founding of Itta Bena. Following several crop failures in the 1850s at his ancestral home in Claiborne County, Humphreys took a trip by river steamer up into the Yazoo wilderness to look for a new farming opportunity in the former Choctaw area.
He found such an opportunity on Roebuck Lake, a stretch of old channel the river had discarded a few miles west of Greenwood, in what was then Sunflower County. Bringing a group of slaves up from his plantations during the winter, when boats could pass from the Yazoo into Roebuck, he directed them to begin the long task of clearing farmland from the overgrown bottomland. Longtime Claiborne County friends became interested in his project, and the first of them began to acquire land in the area two years later.
Humphreys had established a permanent winter residence, "Lucknow," in Claiborne County. He did not bring his family to his plantation until he completed the building of a substantial home in 1857, christened "Itta Bena," the Choctaw words for "Home in the Woods." The walls of Itta Bena were made from logs felled in clearing the plantation, plastered and painted. It was the earliest substantial residence built in the wild Yazoo country and was the center of activity for the plantation’s many hundred acres. The main portion of the original Humphreys home was still in use as a residence in 1954 (thought to be the home of Dr. B. B. Harper on Lakefront Street). Following the Civil War, Humphreys was elected as governor of Mississippi.
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