Professional baseball returned to Meridian in 2026 with the arrival of the Meridian Blues, the city’s first professional team since the Meridian Brakemen played in 1996-97. On summer nights, fans once again gather beneath the Mississippi pines to watch baseball in the Queen City, creating new memories at Charles Scaggs Field on the campus of Meridian Community College and reconnecting Meridian with a tradition that stretches back nearly a century.
But long before the Blues took the field, Meridian’s baseball heartbeat could be found a few miles away at a forgotten ballpark slowly being reclaimed by nature.
Tucked beneath a canopy of overgrown pines sits Buckwalter Stadium, one of the South’s most haunting reminders of minor league baseball’s postwar boom and eventual decline.
⚾ A Field of Dreams: Built for the Meridian Millers
The stadium opened in 1947 as the vision of local businessman Charles Buckwalter. At the time, Meridian’s professional baseball team was playing at the aging Fairgrounds Park. Buckwalter believed the city deserved a modern facility capable of competing with the best ballparks in the Cotton States League and throughout the Deep South. To make it happen, he sold his ownership stake in the team and invested heavily in the construction of a new stadium.
Professional baseball had already been a fixture in Meridian for a decade. Since the franchise’s founding in 1937, the club had competed under several nicknames including the Scrappers, Eagles, Bears, and Peps. The opening of the new ballpark brought a new identity as well. The team became known as the Meridian Millers, and Buckwalter Stadium quickly became one of the city’s most beloved gathering places.
The ballpark seated approximately 3,000 fans and featured a concrete and wooden grandstand, sunken dugouts, a press box, and a playing field surrounded by advertisements from local businesses. Nestled within a residential neighborhood south of downtown Meridian, it embodied everything people loved about small town baseball. Fans could walk to games, children chased foul balls, and entire families gathered in the stands on warm Mississippi evenings.
From 1947 through 1955, the Meridian Millers played their home games at Buckwalter Stadium while competing in both the Southeastern League and the Cotton States League. Along the way, the franchise maintained affiliations with several Major League organizations including the St. Louis Browns, Brooklyn Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, and Baltimore Orioles.
Originally the team played in the Southeastern League, but when that league folded the Millers would join the Cotton States League in 1952. Some seasons, they played independently — showcasing local talent or hosting spring training castoffs fighting to keep their dreams alive. But from the moment the gates opened, Meridian loved its Millers. Attendance was strong, and in 1952 and 1953, the team won back-to-back Cotton States League championships, igniting citywide pride.
When the Southeastern League folded, the Millers joined the Cotton States League in 1952 and immediately found success. Meridian captured back to back league championships in 1952 and 1953, creating one of the most successful periods in the city’s baseball history. Crowds packed the grandstands and the Millers became a source of civic pride throughout East Mississippi.
🌍 A Barrier Broken: Chico Heron in 1954
Perhaps the most important chapter in Buckwalter Stadium’s history arrived in 1954.
That season, the Millers signed an 18 year old infielder from Panama named Chico Heron. While it may not have generated headlines across the country at the time, Heron’s arrival made history. He became the first Black player to appear in professional minor league baseball in the state of Mississippi.
Just seven years after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, Heron entered a segregated Mississippi where discrimination remained deeply entrenched. He faced challenges on and off the field, including segregated accommodations and hostility from some corners of society. Yet Heron excelled where it mattered most. He batted .325 for the Millers and proved himself one of the league’s brightest young stars.
(Above: Chico Heron during his time as a scout for the Yankees. He would pass away in 2007 at the age of 71.)
His impact on baseball would extend far beyond Meridian.
Following his playing career, Heron became a respected scout for several Major League organizations including the Yankees, Phillies, Royals, and Cardinals. He is perhaps best remembered for discovering a skinny Panamanian teenager named Mariano Rivera. That teenager would eventually become the greatest closer in baseball history and a first ballot Hall of Famer.
For that reason alone, Buckwalter Stadium occupies a unique place not only in Mississippi baseball history but also in the broader story of civil rights and professional baseball in America.
🎠 Royal Land
Buckwalter Stadium was not just a baseball venue. Every year the surrounding grounds came alive during the Mississippi Alabama State Fair, drawing visitors from across the region. For many families, a trip to the fairgrounds meant baseball games, carnival rides, livestock exhibitions, and evenings spent making memories.
Those memories became even more colorful in the late 1960s when an unusual attraction appeared next door.
Adjacent to Buckwalter Stadium stood Royal Land, a quirky amusement park created by local entrepreneur Lloyd Royal. According to local lore, Royal acquired abandoned rides left behind by traveling carnival operators following the annual fair. Piece by piece, he assembled a permanent amusement park beside the stadium.
Royal Land featured a collection of second hand rides, carnival attractions, and midway entertainment unlike anything else in Meridian. It never achieved major commercial success and only operated for a few years until the early 70’s, but it became a beloved local attraction for many children growing up during the era.
Today, the most visible reminder of Royal Land is the pair of entrance columns that still stand along Shostatee Street. Hidden among the trees, they serve as a haunting gateway into Meridian’s forgotten past. For visitors exploring Buckwalter Stadium today, the remains of Royal Land add another layer of mystery to an already fascinating site.
Abandonment & Urban Legend
The Cotton States League folded following the 1955 season, bringing professional baseball in Meridian to an end. Without a tenant, the stadium slowly slipped into decline. High school games and semi professional contests continued sporadically, but maintenance became increasingly difficult. By the early 1960s, nature had begun reclaiming the ballpark.
More than sixty years later, Buckwalter Stadium remains remarkably intact.
Trees now grow where infielders once turned double plays. Home plate rests beneath layers of dirt, pine straw, and brush. The dugouts have partially collapsed under decades of neglect. Rust covers the steel framework and vines creep through the grandstands. Yet despite the decay, the bones of the stadium remain standing.
That eerie preservation is what makes Buckwalter Stadium so captivating. It has not been restored. It has not been demolished. Instead, it exists in a strange state between life and death, frozen in time while nature slowly reclaims the property.
Today, with the Meridian Blues bringing professional baseball back to the Queen City, Buckwalter Stadium serves as a reminder that Meridian’s baseball story did not begin in 2026. The cheers echoing across Scaggs Field this summer are simply the latest chapter in a history that stretches back nearly a century.
And hidden beneath the pines, Buckwalter Stadium still stands as the keeper of those memories.
- The once-flat infield is now thick with brush, saplings, and fully grown trees sprouting from the pitcher’s mound and shortstop’s spot.
- Home plate is buried under layers of pine needles and dirt, while the baselines are nothing more than faint clearings among the overgrowth.
- The dugouts have collapsed inward, some filled with vines and broken concrete, others with graffiti and animal nests.
- The bleachers still stand, remarkably, but the wooden seating planks are warped and dangerous. Iron beams are coated in rust, and the old backstop chain-link has buckled from decades of pressure.
It’s this surreal preservation — not restored, not razed, just eerily paused — that has made Buckwalter one of the most famous abandoned stadiums in America. If you search “abandoned baseball stadium” on Google, YouTube, or TikTok, Buckwalter Stadium often appears on the first page, making it a kind of “holy grail” for urban explorers, drone photographers, and historians.
And though much of Storyland’s more whimsical trappings may be lost to time, the ghostly remains of Royal Land’s entrance towers and rusted rides serve as eerie companions to Buckwalter’s empty stands—a paired relic of Mississippi’s mid‑century communal life.
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