Editor&8217;s note: These stories are the first in a three-day series on the past, present and possible future of the Natchez and Vidalia riverfronts.

VIDALIA, La. &8212; The story of the Vidalia Riverfront doesn&8217;t start in 1991, when community leaders started kicking around the idea of a retail, recreation and convention complex alongside the Mississippi River.

No, it goes back a little farther than that, back to 1938, when representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers walked into then-Vidalia Mayor George Murray&8217;s office and told him something startling.

&8220;They said,

&8216;We&8217;re going to have to move your entire town because we&8217;re going to make a cutoff in the river,&8217;&8221; Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland said.

Many of the town&8217;s buildings, including a number of public offices, were moved from their location on the river to Vidalia&8217;s present location.

The Corps built up the levee and the area where the Riverfront is to protect the city and stop erosion when the Giles Cutoff, which created Giles Island, was made.

Eventually the riverfront began use as a mat-manufacturing area for the Corps of Engineers. From 1946 to 1991, the corps used the area to make the huge, articulated concrete mats that were used for river control purposes.

The concrete mats were used to control the path of the river, but they didn&8217;t make for an attractive riverfront.

Fifteen years ago it was literally a dusty, featureless plain. There was no grass, no trees, no nothing, just a rocky field,&8221; Riverfront Committee chairman Ralph Shields said.

But even securing the land from the Corps of Engineers wasn&8217;t easy. The Corps only had servitude rights to the land, meaning the land could be used while the original residents maintained ownership.

&8220;We had to get the Corps to release the servitude rights to us and then purchase the land from the original landowners,&8221; Shields said.

That meant tracking down the descendants of every person who owned land in Old Town Vidalia, a search that took city officials across the world and as far as Australia. The vast majority of descendants were found and land purchased in a process that took years and about 1.5 million to accomplish, Copeland said. More money is in escrow for any descendants that might turn up in the future.

The force behind what eventually became the Riverfront Commission was former Vidalia mayor Sidney Murray, who recruited most of the committee members and worked closely with Mayor Sam Randazzo and then Copeland to make the Riverfront come to life.

Sidney

give him all the credit, Pat Biglane, a committee member, said. Hes the one who got me involved.

Meanwhile, there was still the question of what should be done with the riverfront property. Vidalia had public hearings and looked at other cities with riverfront developments to get some idea what should be put there.

&8220;In 1992, we started deciding what to do with the property and had some public hearings on it,&8221; Copeland said. &8220;The end result of those discussions is what we have there.&8221;

The first phase, with more than two miles of riverwalk and roads through the area was completed in 2000. A second phase, with the fountain and amphitheater was finished in 2001. The Comfort Suites Riverfront hotel and Riverpark Medical Center have also been completed.