Mississippi places

Places to Go in Mississippi

23 towns and places, by region. Pick one on the map, or browse below.

Capital/River

Jackson's museums and the river towns of Vicksburg, Port Gibson and Natchez.

Jackson

Jackson is Mississippi's capital and its government, business and cultural center. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, the state history and art museums, the Old Capitol Museum and the Governor's Mansion are all within walking distance of one another, and every four years the city hosts the International Ballet Competition.

Natchez

Natchez was established as a French fort site overlooking the Mississippi River on August 3, 1716, on land first inhabited by the Natchez Indians. Its visitors bureau calls it the birthplace of Mississippi, a town whose culture was shaped by people of African, French, British and Spanish descent.

Port Gibson

The Federal Highway Administration's byway guide describes Port Gibson as the town General Grant proclaimed too beautiful to burn. The Ruins of Windsor, the remains of Mississippi's largest antebellum mansion, lie nearby.

Vicksburg

Coca-Cola was first bottled anywhere in the world in Vicksburg in 1894, and the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum tells the story. The museum holds Coke memorabilia, the bottling works and a restored candy store serving Cokes, floats and ice cream.

Coastal

Gulf beaches and seafood, with Hattiesburg and Laurel inland.

Bay St. Louis

The Alice Moseley Folk Art Museum fills the second floor of the L&N Train Depot in Bay St. Louis with more than 100 of her original paintings. Alice Moseley began painting at 65, as a hobby while she was caring for her mother, and her work went on to be featured in Southern Living and Travel and Leisure.

Biloxi

The Biloxi Lighthouse, built in 1848, is one of the first cast-iron structures erected in the South and is called one of the most photographed sites on the Gulf Coast. Tours of the 65-foot tower climb a 57-step spiral staircase past waterlines left by hurricanes dating back more than a hundred years.

Gulfport

The Mississippi Aquarium in Gulfport is a nonprofit public aquarium with more than 200 species of animals and 50 species of native plants in indoor and outdoor habitats. Its exhibits follow Mississippi's waters from the river, lakes and wetlands to the Gulf, with American alligators, beavers, sea horses and sea turtles.

Hattiesburg

The Hattiesburg Zoo has more than 100 species of animals, including capybaras, giraffes, hyenas and bongos. Visitors can also try a four-story ropes course designed for kids and adults or an up-close encounter with a sloth.

Laurel

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel is Mississippi's first art museum, founded in 1923 in memory of Lauren Eastman Rogers. Its building was designed by New Orleans architect Rathbone DeBuys, and it has an extensive collection of American Indian baskets.

Ocean Springs

The Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs celebrates Walter Inglis Anderson's depictions of the plants, animals and people of the Gulf Coast, along with the work of his brothers Peter and James McConnell Anderson. The Ocean Springs Community Center next door holds Walter Anderson's largest mural.

Delta

The Birthplace of the Blues, plus the place where Kermit the Frog began.

Clarksdale

Clarksdale calls itself the Home of the Blues, in the heart of the Delta just south of Memphis. Its visitors bureau names Muddy Waters and Sam Cooke among the music legends tied to the town, and advertises live music seven nights a week, 365 days a year.

Cleveland

GRAMMY Museum Mississippi in Cleveland is an interactive museum focused on the continuing musical achievements of Mississippians. It opened on March 5, 2016, in a state known around the world as the Birthplace of America's Music.

Greenville

Greenville is home to the original Doe's Eat Place, which Visit Mississippi calls the state's legendary hole-in-the-wall steakhouse. The restaurant has been serving guests here since 1941.

Greenwood

The Museum of the Mississippi Delta in Greenwood was founded in the 1970s as Cottonlandia. It covers centuries of Delta history, from prehistoric fossils and American Indian artifacts to Civil War history and the remnants of Greenwood Leflore's lost mansion.

Indianola

The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center stands in Indianola, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Its exhibits tell the story of B.B. King's life and music.

Leland

Leland's Birthplace of the Frog tableau honors Kermit's beginnings on the banks of Deer Creek. The Jim Henson Delta Boyhood Exhibit was a gift to the people of Leland from Jane Henson and The Jim Henson Legacy.

Hills

William Faulkner's Oxford and Elvis Presley's Tupelo, in the Appalachian foothills.

Corinth

The slugburger is a fried patty of meat and a filler such as potato flakes, soybeans or flour, typically dressed with pickles, onions and yellow mustard. Corinth's tourism office recommends it to every visitor and notes that it's found throughout North Mississippi and parts of Tennessee and Alabama.

Holly Springs

Ida B. Wells was born to enslaved parents in Holly Springs and became a journalist and co-owner of the Memphis newspaper Free Speech. Her investigative reporting publicized often unreported accounts of lynching in the South.

Oxford

Oxford is home to William Faulkner's Rowan Oak estate, the University of Mississippi and Square Books. Its downtown is walkable, with everything within a half-mile of the historic courthouse square, and its visitors bureau says most people spend two to three days here.

Tupelo

Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo on January 8, 1935, in a two-room house his father built with $180. The house draws more than 50,000 visitors a year and is the centerpiece of the 15-acre Elvis Presley Park, which also holds his childhood church and the Elvis at 13 statue.

Pines

Tennessee Williams's Columbus, Jimmie Rodgers's Meridian and Starkville's Cotton District.

Columbus

The official visitor center for the City of Columbus is the restored childhood home of Tennessee Williams, who was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in 1911. The Victorian house, built around 1875 as the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, is also a museum and a National Literary Landmark.

Meridian

Visit Mississippi says the Highland Park Dentzel Carousel in Meridian was made by Gustav Dentzel of Philadelphia for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and sold to the city in 1909. It is one of the few surviving two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie carousels and a National Historic Landmark. Renovation work can close it, so call before you go.

Starkville

The Cotton District in Starkville is a walkable mixed-use development that has been called a national model for new urbanism. It stands on land once occupied by a large cotton mill and its workers' tenant housing, and now holds student and faculty housing, restaurants and shops.