The newly reopened rest area near the site of the Pocahontas Indian Mound will be named for three people generally recognized for having worked to save the historical site from development.

A bill pending before Gov. Haley Barbour would name the rest area for the late Charlotte Capers, Ed Blake and Greg Scales. The “Capers, Blake, Scales Rest Area” designation is part of broader bill that also would designate U.S. Highway 61 through the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the “Highway 61, the Blues Highway.”

The rest area reopened this year and is the only state-maintained roadside rest stop on U.S. Highway 49 from Pocahontas to Yazoo City.

Nearby sits one of Mississippi’s oldest Indian mounds. The mound was built between A.D. 1000 and 1400, according to recent archaeological investigations.

The mound, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was a burial and ceremonial site used by tribes who inhabited the region thousands of years ago. It is one of two in the area.

Several years ago, the state Department of Transportation shut some rest areas along highways, including the Pocahontas stop, because of expensive upkeep, rising crime rates and low usage.

Capers, who died in 1996, was a former director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and a driving force behind saving the Indian mound from development. Blake is a local historian who grew up in the area and is writing a book on the small community. Scales, an advocate for reopening the rest area, is leading volunteers to staff it.

The bill is part of a cycle of legislation to designate bridges, service roads, highways, welcome centers and so on for military units, slain law enforcement officers and locally popular public figures and politicians.

In the past eight years, at least 52 such designations have been enacted.

In addition to the Blues Highway and Pocahontas rest area, at least 15 others came from the 2008 Legislature and have been approved by Gov. Haley Barbour.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation is responsible for putting up the signs — ranging in cost from $3,000 to $5,000 each, according to MDOT figures.

Among the other roads being named for people this year:

— Part of U.S. Highway 90 in Biloxi for Dr. Gilbert R. Mason Sr., known as south Mississippi’s “civil rights doctor,” who was one of the state’s leading crusaders for racial equality. He died in 2006.

— Part of U.S. Highway 84 in Adams County for Richard Wright, the internationally known author of “Native Son” who died in Paris in 1960.

— Part of U.S. Highway 90 in Pass Christian for former Rep. James C. Simpson Sr., who served more than two decades in the Mississippi House and died in 1994.