The Whiskey Chute Rail Crossing will be closed on Thursday, April 24, at 7 a.m. and re-opened on Friday, April 25, around noon.

Grenada Railroad manager Trevor Costilow confirmed the maintenance closure to city officials on Monday, giving drivers who use the route more than a week of notice. 

The curiously named Whiskey Chute is the short connector road from near the end of Lomax Street, across the railroad tracks to Pearson Street/Highway 35. The “chute” has heavy traffic counts as drivers use it to access Hwy. 35S and Hwy. 6W, avoiding the overhead bridge.

The last time a Whiskey Chute closure was announced (in 2022), social media posts from across the city questioned how the name found its way into the local lexicon.

Many residents of Batesville had not heard of the Whiskey Chute and many others simply associated the name with the liquor store at the location now, but not understanding the name’s origin or its significance in local history.

Former Panolian publisher John Howell, Sr., answered many questions with his own post. To wit:

Once upon a time, there was no liquor store at its corner, nor were there liquor stores anywhere in the state, not as legally licensed businesses anyway. Mississippi enjoyed prohibition of alcohol until the state legislature finally changed the law in 1966 to allow county option referendums. 

Panola County voters that summer voted in legal liquor sales. Liquor stores began opening in Batesville. 

(Beer was different. It was already a local option. Panola voters had voted the county dry for beer in the late 1950s, so there was no beer sold legally here in 1966, either, but county voters approved beer sales also in another referendum that soon followed.)

Not that the thirsty couldn’t find quench for thirsts. Bootlegging thrived, sometimes in spite of efforts of the local constabulary, sometimes with their help.

Liquor legalization forced some to change buying habits. I remember asking the late Brooks Vance, Jr. (not the longtime Panola County Chancery Clerk some will remember; he was Brooks III), shortly after the referendum passed, what he thought about having legal liquor. 

“I don’t like it,” he said. “They used to bring it to my house, now I’ll have to go to the store.”

Bootleggers could make purchases convenient. Also more private. Purchases from bootleggers allowed the buyer privacy that walking into a public place of business and purchasing a bottle outright no longer afforded.

Which brings me back to Whiskey Chute. The first legal liquor store in Batesville was located near the intersection at Highway 6 and 51, across Highway 51 from where McDonald’s stands today. It was a high traffic area then, if only a shadow of what has followed since. Too visible for an avowed teetotaler who needed to slake an occasional thirst. 

There were apparently enough of those part-time teetotalers back then that when a new liquor store opened in a small block building at the corner of Pearson Street, Highway 35 and the short connector street, they were soon making trips there for purchases. 

Less traffic, fewer eyes, fewer nosey passersby.  Many of those liquor buyers would drive down Lomax Street or Perkins Lane and shoot through the “chute,” across the railroad tracks to the whiskey store and then back again. 

And that short connector road crossing the railroad tracks has been known since as Whiskey Chute.