Pearl River County High Point Trip Report

Date: June 1, 2000
Author: Fred Dale

Pearl River County's HP as listed in County High Points (Martin) is 390+ feet. I visited the site, described below. But DeLorme TopoUSA gave the spot's max elev as 404'; and another area (known as Red Top Hill) also rises to that level, according to DeLorme. So even though the second area on USGS topos only gains entry inside the 380' contour interval, I wanted to visit it too to be complete. Did it, but what a bag of worms! I then confirmed that Pearl River County's areas which are inside the 380' contour intervals but south of 31 degrees latitude constitute the entire candidate pool for HP of the short-lived Republic of West Florida.

A small but significant part of the county lies north of the 31st parallel; that piece contains our official HP (which I'll get around to discussing shortly). So, all USGS 380 contours S of 31 degrees had to be visited. There were four spots to visit, including Red Top Hill, and one 384' spot shown only on DeLorme TopoUSA. Red Top is certainly the largest of these below 31 degrees and within 380+ ft contours, so especially with DeLorme's advocacy of equal billing for the county HP at 404', I'll call it the [defunct] national HP until proven otherwise.

The area is on the W side of Lumberton, MS (which has downtown a historical marker of West Fla.). I visited the only home inside the 390 ft contour line, on the W side of Grady Brown road, ~ 0.1 mi. SE of the county line. I walked the yard and adjacent cornfield, picking up the highest-looking ground.

The official USGS (topo quad derived) HP:

Topo chart
N31 deg 0.82', W 89 deg 30.65'
DeLorme altitude = 404 ft

If anyone is interested further, I can supply details on Red Top Hill, and the Republic of West Florida HP.

Topo chart
N 30 deg 57.82', W 89 deg, 27.90'
DeLorme elev 404 ft (USGS elev 380+ ft (10' intervals))