Until the late nineteenth century, large semirural estates covered the heights west of the Illinois Central Railroad, and for the dozen years of Reconstruction, a U.S. Army garrison occupied a large area bounded by Gallatin, Silas Brown, and W. Pearl streets. Subdivision began in the 1870s and followed the extension and electrification in 1901 of the streetcar line from W. Capitol Street so rapidly that much of what is now known as West Jackson was annexed by the city by 1908. In two decades of sustained City Beautiful projects, the city built the picturesquely landscaped Cedar Lawn Cemetery (c. 1899; 2434 W. Capitol Street), Poindexter Park (c. 1900; 825 W. Capitol), and Livingston Park (JM68).
Suburban development included both black and white neighborhoods, with wealthier whites lining W. Capitol, Gallatin, and their side streets, and middle-income African Americans claiming areas along Lynch Street and Bailey Avenue. This mixture of racial and economic groups initially distinguished West Jackson from slightly later, all-white suburbs such as Belhaven and Fondren, but by the 1950s, whites of all economic levels began to move out to segregated new subdivisions in north and south Jackson. Concurrently, and not coincidentally, post-World War II public investments such as Jackson State College (JM66; now Jackson State University) and the Negro Mississippi School for the Deaf (closed) on Capers Avenue implicitly designated the entire area as African American. Today, many sections are abandoned, and some streets are reverting to nature. Ironically, the Metro Parkway (2004 completed) leading from downtown to Jackson State University demolished most of the early African American neighborhoods that had nurtured the college.
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