Verona, MS

At the 2020 census, Verona was a Lee County city of 2,792 and the oldest incorporated city in the county. Its story starts with the Mobile and Ohio Railroad in 1857 and the town’s charter in 1860, when the rail line made this a useful stop south of Tupelo. The Civil War left a sharp mark: Nathan Bedford Forrest used Verona as a headquarters in 1863, and Union cavalry raided the Confederate supply depot on Christmas Day 1864.

Verona’s older layer is still visible in the Raymond House, also called the Verona Heritage House, a rare surviving antebellum Gothic Revival cottage and the oldest surviving residence in town. The Lee County School District serves local students, while present-day Verona sits close to the roads and regional orbit of Tupelo. The town has lost population since 2010, but its physical story is unusually legible: railroad, depot, wartime headquarters, and one old house that keeps the nineteenth century from disappearing behind newer development. Verona is a small place with a very specific job in the history of Lee County—railroad town, wartime crossroads, and keeper of the county’s oldest civic memory.