Ground broken for Marks Amtrak Station

By John Howell
Marks, Quitman County and friends  opened a beautiful October festival weekend by breaking ground for its long-awaited Amtrak Station Friday.
State and local government and economic development officials were met by a large crowd of people happy to see fruition of 21 years of on-and-off negotiations that finally led to the first step in the station’s construction.
The passenger station ground-breaking opened the 2016 Quitman County Mules-Blues Fest that included a community picnic, dedication of the Mississippi Freedom Trail Mule Train Marker commemorating the 1968 event inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King that originated in the Quitman County seat and a new welcome sign marking the Mule Train site.
“People from all over these counties, all over the north Delta, will be coming to Marks,” Marks Mayor Joe Shegog said in his remarks opening the ceremony.
It became the refrain of the day.
“It helps Marks to become a transportation center for north Mississippi,” said Citizens Bank and Trust Company CEO Peyton Self as he introduced speaker Northern District Transportation Commissioner Mike Tagert.
“This project has been driven by you, the people of Marks, Quitman County and north Mississippi,” Tagert said during his remarks. “It has not been a sprint, it has been a marathon.
“This is another ‘connectivity’ … an important benefit for the whole state,” Tagert continued.
After Tagert downplayed his role and MDOT’s role in bringing the station to Marks, Quitman County Board of Supervisors President Manuel Killebrew, who spoke next, called his hand, citing the “money.”
Station construction is funded by a $500,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration through MDOT with a 20 percent local match from a Mississippi Development Authority grant.
“We’ve been working on this over 20 years,” Killebrew said, but recalled having been made to feel better after talking with officials from Hope, Arkansas whose efforts to establish a stop in their city had also consumed two decades.
The Quitman supervisors’ board president named many in the community who had helped the effort to land Amtrak including fellow supervisors, the city mayor and aldermen, Quitman County officials including Chancery Clerk Butch Scipper, County Administrator Velma Benson-Wilson, Senator Robert Jackson, North Delta Planning and Development District Director James Cursio, Congressman Bennie Thompson and Delta State University President and former Congressional counsel Bill LaForge, among others.
“We’re going to be looking at  pursuing (students) from Ole Miss, Delta State … all the schools,” Killebrew said. “My first ride will be to New Orleans,” he added at the end of his remarks.
“This location makes a whole lot of sense,” said Mississippi State Representative Cedric Burnett of Tunica. “Amtrak will allow us to expose the good things of Quitman County.”
Senator Jackson called it a “great day for Marks; we’re on the map now.”
Then Jackson, directing his remarks to Tagert, upped the ante: “What would go great with Amtrak is to four-lane Highway 6!”
The final speaker was Amtrak’s Crescent/City of New Orleans Route Director Anella Popo who made a brief statement welcoming Marks to Amtrak and then ended by saying, “You know what they say: ‘Build it and they will come.’”
Amtrak passenger service at Marks will begin following the completion of the passenger platform in 2017.