Vicksburg is a city strategically located on a bluff above a bend of the Mississippi river. Vicksburg earned the name of "Gibraltar of the Confederacy" as the last obstacle to Union control of the Mississippi River. Although Vicksburg defenses remained impregnable, its surrender after a long siege was a pivotal event of the Civil War. The magnitude of the military events can be grasped through more than a thousand monuments erected amongst battle position markers in Vicksburg National Military Park. The historical town has a number of antebellum houses and a few quirky museums, from the instructive Old Courthouse museum, set in an impressive building (where the Union Flag was first flown after the siege), to the Biedenharn Candy and Coca-Cola memorabilia museum where the drink was bottled for the first time. Since then, riverboats have been reconverted into casinos.
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