Durant Sites

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the Durant Public School in 1940-42. N. W. Overstreet and Associates designed the Art Moderne school building and  W. E. Rubush of Meridian was the superintendent of construction. The building is 181 feet by 138 feet, with a 2-story central auditorium joining together two single-story wings.  The Durant school system made two applications to the federal government for aid in building a new school.  Public Works Administration application x1330 was returned unfunded due to lack of funds. A Works Progress Administration application was submitted in 1940 and approved for project no. 41133 for an allotment of...

Six rustic style cabins, park landscape, park manager’s residence, lodge, pavilion, and a 525 foot dam forming a 12-acre lake were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps Company 4429 between 1935-1939. Construction utilized cypress timber from the Big Black river swamps. Architect was B. W. Martin. Holmes County park opened in summer of 1939, off highway 51 five miles south of Durant. It comprised 460 acres, although only about 20 acres hold the majority of CCC resources. During January and February 1936, Park Service and the Emergency Conservation Works filmed a motion picture to show the work being done in...

The Colonial Revival style post office building was completed in 1939 by the Treasury Department.

Isidore Toberoff's mural, "Erosion, Reclamation and Conservation of the Soil" was completed in 1942. The oil-on-canvas work was completed under the auspices of the Treasury Section of Fine Arts. Toberoff was a 1942 Pulitzer Prize winner in art, and while himself recovering from war injuries, helped to provide therapy for wounded soldiers in the occupational therapy program at Fort Benjamin Harrison in 1943 (Bower, 1984).