Chickasaw Heritage Park

Chickasaw Heritage Park - Delaware @ DeSoto

• 17 Acres
• Playground ball field
• Pavilion
• Prehistoric earth mounds
• Historic markers
• Scenic Mississippi River views
• 1 Outdoor basketball court
• Under "Riverfront Development Corporation" Management
• Archaeological, Mississippian culture, B.C.
• 1600's A.D. Chickasaws - moved by 1818
• Established as Desoto Park ca. 1911 National Register

In 1887, the area currently known as Chickasaw Heritage Park was part of Jackson Mounds Park, an amusement park where Memphians came for dancing, beer, light opera, band concerts, promenades, and other entertainment. The site was once the fortress of Chickasaw chief Chisca and features two ceremonial mounds built by Paleo-Indians in the 1500s. Several forts built by the French, Spanish, and Americans were located near here. The United States’ first was Fort Adams. Built too close to the river and susceptible to flood and malaria, in 1801, it was renamed and moved to just above the Indian Mounds. The new name was Fort Pickering, named after George Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering. The fort lost its importance after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and was practically abandoned in 1806. During the Civil War, the mounds were hollowed out and used for gun emplacements and munitions storage. Though Indian bones were discovered in excavating the roadway around the park, the site’s archaeologic significance remains relatively unexplored.


Indian mound and monument where DeSoto discovered the Mississippi River, DeSoto Park, Fort Pickering, Memphis TN - Circa 1938 Photo of: Henry C Acosta