Jasper County High Point Trip Report

Baxter Hill on Montrose North Quadrangle, section 16-4N-11E (687 ft)

Date: November 9, 2000
Author: Fred Dale

map-derived coordinates (32 deg 11.68' N, 89 deg 10.41' W) (Bradley Lookout Tower)
Topo chart

Start at Montrose, MS on State Hwy. 15. Go north 5.9 miles. Turn left on gravel road marked CR 1563. Proceed 0.4 mi., passing a small pink house on the right. The road is gated just up ahead. The hp is up the hill mere yards to your left, near an abandoned mobile home and several old vehicles. The BM was not recovered, though several witness posts serving as locators for it were; all were within 1 foot elevation of each other at a fence line. It appears the witness posts' position is the current hp. It is at this fence that the first no-trespassing sign appears; the hp is attainable without crossing it. We observed old gravel mining evidence just to the north, beyond the fire tower (which is not the hp).

Note: The hp of the early (1798) Mississippi Territory was either the hp of today's Barbour County, Alabama or Jasper County, Mississippi's highpoint. The winner is Barbour as determined by USGS topos, but when checking TopoUSA's supposedly DEM-derived spot elevation points, an elevation of 696 to 697' appears at the Baxter Hill/Jasper Co., MS site, exceeding the same source's value for either of the Barbour County highpoints. This lowland minutia, with its historical-geographic tie-in, illustrates the perplexing disparity between different sources in reckoning the hp elevation.