Centreville, MS

Centreville is a town in southwest Mississippi split between Amite and Wilkinson counties, laid out along the former Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad. The community's older names were Elysian Fields and Amite Courthouse; the post office became Centreville in 1824 because the settlement sat between Liberty and Woodville, and between Natchez and Baton Rouge. When the railroad arrived in 1884, engineers bypassed the older settlement by half a mile, so a new Centreville was laid out on either side of the tracks. Main Street still divides into East and West.

Today the old rail corridor is remembered through Louis Gaulden and Riquita B. Jackson Park, which replaced the depot and tracks. Bethany Presbyterian Church, built in 1855 near the town, is a rare surviving rural church form. The county line keeps school life split between Wilkinson County and Amite County districts, while Southwest Mississippi Community College serves the wider region. Centreville's local feel comes from those layers: railroad streets, a county-line address, old church architecture, and a small town that grew because trains once chose this exact midpoint.