Algoma, MS

Algoma is a Pontotoc County town about six miles south of Pontotoc on Mississippi Highway 15. The 2020 census counted 705 residents. The town serves a rural part of north Mississippi, with the Pontotoc County School District, a post office, churches, volunteer fire service, and farms filling in the space around the old rail site. October’s Cross-Tie Festival keeps the town’s timber-and-rail past in the current civic calendar.

Algoma began as a 1830s community on an old trail through Chickasaw country. A post office opened in 1874, and the settlement moved about a mile when the Gulf and Chicago Railroad reached the area in 1904. Timber fed the railroad, the H.B. Owen Tie Company, and a yard that shipped thousands of cross ties; at its height Algoma had stores, churches, a school, a depot, a cotton gin, and other businesses. A 1913 tornado and a series of fires damaged the town, and the depot was removed around 1959. As the timber supply faded, farming became the steadier local base.