Richmond, LA

Richmond is a Madison Parish village on Brushy Bayou, with 511 people at the 2020 census, down from 577 in 2010. It is part of the Tallulah micropolitan area; Tallulah borders the village to the north, and Interstate 20 passes along the south side at Exit 173. I-20 leads about 20 miles west to Delhi and east to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Those modern roads surround a place whose older history is tied to the Civil War and the Vicksburg Campaign.

Richmond served as the seat of Madison Parish during the Civil War and sat on a Confederate supply route between the Mississippi and Tensas Rivers. On June 15, 1863, Union forces crossed Brushy Bayou, fought the Battle of Richmond, and burned the town. The National Park Service records one Union death and 11 wounded, alongside five Confederate deaths and 25 captured. The present-day village incorporated on August 28, 1973, more than a century after the earlier settlement's destruction. Public education now runs through the Madison Parish School District, with campuses in nearby Tallulah; Tallulah Academy Delta Christian School is in Richmond. The local thread is a rebuilt village beside an old battlefield, with Brushy Bayou and I-20 marking the newer map.