The August 8th Clarksdale Press Register featured an article about our hometown. TripAdvisor, Newton, Mass, the world's largest travel site, stated their editor's top ten quirkiest U.S. properties. #5 is Shack Up Inn, Clarksdale, MS.
Come spend your time and money with us, people from around the world do. Nightly rates average $65. Shack Up Inn boasts, "The Ritz we ain't." The shacks provide "a laid-back and rustic setting. Each shack offers a touch of comfort while maintaining the authenticity of the former Hopson Plantation, located near (in) the Missippi Delta - and travelers can soak up the site's history as they walk among sharecropper shacks, the original cotton gin and seed houses located on the property. 'The rooms may not have a high-def TV, but they do have vintage musical instruments and more character than I could accumulate in a lifetime,' said one TripAdvisor traveler."
Back in the day, the shacks were also called shotgun houses: From the front door to the back there were no walls, rooms were to the side. The day laborers who "lived" there did not have running water or a bathroom. After all day in the cotton fields in sweltering heat and high humidity, A/C would have been nice, but it wasn't an option, either.
In the late 40's, the first-ever mechanical cotton picker was brought to Hopson Plantation. There was a lot of head-scratching and number crunching. It was a noisy contraption, but . . . if it worked . . . , it could replace the costs of human labor. It did and it did. Today, you can see, touch and have your picture taken by that first cotton picker setting out by the gin at Hopson's.
2012 Red Convertible Travel Series
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