Opened in 1937, Legion State Park was the fourth CCC-built state park in Mississippi. From 1954 to 1979 the park served the Boy Scouts of America as Camp Palila. Paul D. Thompson (1937-2016), nicknamed “Big Iron” after a popular Marty Robbins song, was the last camp ranger and lived here from 1967 to 1979 with his wife and daughters. Thompson was a Mississippi highway patrolman and scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 5 in Louisville from 1963 to 2008, and he influenced the lives of thousands of young men at Camp Palila.