Natchez is a town steeped in history with roots firmly based on the work of men and women who had vision.

Many centuries ago, some really wise members of the Natchez tribe chose to settle near the bluffs of this interesting part of the world. They had vision that it would make a good home. They were correct.

A couple of centuries ago, the French settled here, also seeing more potential than just a high spot on the Mississippi River. Their vision was correct, too.

Cotton planters came after that, also seeing something that wasn’t there. Their vision led to a booming industry that ultimately shaped this area.

And, more recently, a group of Natchez socialites had the seemingly unusual idea of inviting visitors into their houses and charging a small fee. Seventy-five years later, we just celebrated the anniversary of another Spring Pilgrimage.

Each of those instances took a bit of vision and each, in their day, probably seemed difficult to understand.

Imagine the comments:

“So you’re going to camp out next to a group of Native Americans with whom you struggle to communicate?”

“You really see money when you look across the river at all that flat land?”

“Who on earth would pay good money to come into my house? Don’t you know how bad the economy is right now?”

Few of those ideas probably seemed all that logical or sure. Experts of the day may have laughed at the notion, for example, of how the first Pilgrimages would succeed in the middle of the Great Depression.

On Wednesday, sitting inside the Carriage House Restaurant Natchez Rotary Club members heard from an academic expert who has studied casinos in Mississippi for several years.

Her belief is that Natchez cannot support a second or third casino. She made no bones about it.

Critics believed that she must have been a paid expert witness, as it were, testifying on behalf of the Isle of Capri Casino, the city’s lone gambling grotto.

That’s an outlandish notion.

Even if the Isle’s general manager asked her to come to town and talk, it’s extremely unlikely she would lie on behalf of the Isle.

Her opinions, based on her own research, just agrees with the Isle’s point of view — that one casino is just the right amount.

Perhaps they’re both correct.

Perhaps all that Natchez ever needs is floating at the bottom of Natchez Under-the-Hill. No one knows for sure.

The same kinds of naysayers have criticized the fate of the new hotels being built in Natchez, too.

These critics never seem happy. They’re the first to jump on the City of Natchez’s leadership for having too much debt on the Natchez Convention Center.

But when the city finally secures a convention center hotel, these same folks criticize it as being a “Field of Dreams” without a true, clear need being felt.

Tourism amenities and tourists themselves is a fickle combination. Not unlike the chicken and the egg conundrum. One cannot begin without the other.

To criticize and verbally doom any new development — hotel or casino — just based on the current status quo is missing the bigger picture.

No one knows what the future will hold, but visionaries, leaders and entrepreneurs will always be looking ahead, seeing the future opportunity as yet unrealized.

To write them off as doomed to fail is undercutting Natchez’s true history and the beauty of American capitalism.

For my money, if someone wants to build a hotel, a casino or a giant artificial-snow-fed ski resort, more power to him.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.