Vicksburg National Military Park employees, from left, Gary Lee, Park Ranger Dan Seifert and Bendel White stand near Fort Hill Drive Thursday afternoon after heavy rains weakened part of Connecting Avenue. (Brian LodenThe Vicksburg Post)

[12/10/04]A Vicksburg National Military Park tour road sloughed during heavy rain this week, meaning some park traffic will be detoured through the city perhaps for months.

Park staff had been using asphalt to patch and bolster the stretch between the USS Cairo site and the Fort Hill entrance, where ground had shifted before.

“It had been planned and designed for federal highways to do a reconstruction,” said Superintendent Monika Mayr. “It was scheduled for next summer. We were keeping our fingers crossed that it would make it through the winter, but it didn’t.”

The road, called Connecting Avenue, runs below Fort Hill, a steep bluff along the Yazoo Diversion Canal on the park’s western edge.

The breaks occurred on a half-mile stretch of the park’s tour route. It links two longer parts of the tour route, that is 16 miles long and allows for only one-way traffic.

About 4 inches of rain fell Wednesday night and Thursday morning. That amount was in addition to the 2.15 inches that fell Monday, and it brought the total for the first eight days of the month to 8.1 inches. For the year, Vicksburg has received 82.82 inches of rain, 8.36 inches more than the 37-year record of 74.46, set in 1983 and two feet more than an average year.

The Federal Highway Administration had already placed three wells to measure the rising water table under the ground in preparation for the reconstruction project, which has also already been funded.

A slough line is visible at the site, with the road surface about a foot and a half higher on the higher side of one break.

Mayr said reconstruction is expected to take about six months. During that time, traffic will be rerouted from near the USS Cairo museum along a park service road called Givens Road onto North Washington Street, south to First East Street, east to Fort Hill Drive and back north on Fort Hill Drive to the Fort Hill gate and east on Confederate Avenue.

The detour will take traffic to the northern edge of downtown Vicksburg. It was to begin today or Monday, as soon as signs could be made and put in place.

“The city knows that we will be routing traffic through town and is supportive and in agreement,” Mayr said.

Until the detour route is established, park officials are using special arrangements to get visitors to and from the Cairo site and National Military Cemetery.

The park and the USS Cairo museum are open from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. every day of the year but Christmas and receives nearly a million people a year. Congress created it in 1899 to commemorate one of the most decisive battles of the American Civil War, the 1863 campaign, siege and defense of Vicksburg.