In 1860 land speculators following the new Mobile and Ohio Railroad laid out a town on the Tupelo site, calling it Gum Pond for the stand of tupelo trees [then known locally as blackgums] around a small lake. In 1870 citizens incorporated their community, which had become the county seat of newly formed Lee County in 1867, and renamed it Tupelo, not for the trees but for the local Civil War battle. In 1886, the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad arrived and made the town a transportation hub and a place for regional industrial development. In 1933 it became the first city powered by electricity from the TVA. A 1936 tornado cut a swath through the community, moving from the southwest to the northeast, skirting the downtown but destroying most of the early housing stock.
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