The 7 Can't-Miss Towns In Mississippi
Mississippi takes its name from a Native American word for "great waters," and the towns strung along its rivers and coast carry that history in plain sight. In Natchez, a cotton broker's 1823 mansion still looks out over the Mississippi River. In Cleveland, sharecroppers on a Delta cotton plantation shaped the sound that became the blues. Oxford grew up around the state's first public university and later around one of its most famous residents, William Faulkner. The seven towns here trade on real things: a fossil tooth that rewrote a chapter of paleontology, a soda fountain pouring since 1905, a bay you can watch the sun drop into from the deck of a tiki boat.
Oxford
The town's founders named Oxford after the English university city in the hope of luring a state university to their corner of north-central Mississippi. The gamble paid off. The University of Mississippi opened here in 1848 with 80 students, and the town has grown up around it ever since. The novelist William Faulkner spent most of his life in Oxford, mapping its people and landscape into the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.
Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, is now a museum. He named the house after two trees, the rowan of Scotland for peace and the American live oak for strength and solitude, and its rooms and grounds look much as he left them. Lamar Park, a lakeside green with an arboretum, makes an easy walk afterward. For dinner, Ajax Diner on the Square plates the kind of Southern cooking Oxford runs on.
Ocean Springs
Visitors first came to Ocean Springs in the mid-1850s for the mineral springs along Fort Bayou, which people believed could cure a range of ailments. Dr. William Austin built a hotel near the springs, and the town took its name from it around 1854. The water still draws people outdoors, and the Davis Bayou area of Gulf Islands National Seashore is the place to get on it. From the lookout at the Davis Bayou fishing pier, you can watch fish, wading birds, and the occasional dolphin.
Downtown, Tato-Nut Donut Shop fries its doughnuts fresh each morning, and the line runs around the block on weekends, so come early. A five-minute walk away, the Ocean Springs Fresh Market sets up every Saturday with local dairy, honey, and meat.
Natchez
Natchez ranks among the oldest incorporated towns in Mississippi, and dozens of its pre-Civil War homes still stand. Peter Little built Rosalie Mansion between 1820 and 1823 on the bluff above the Mississippi River. Its position over the water made it useful to the Union Army, which took the house as its Natchez headquarters after occupying the town in 1863. Rosalie now operates as a museum, with formal gardens and a gift shop.
Bluff Park is the spot to catch a sunset over the river, with a long view down the bluff that tends to stick with people. After dark, the Under-the-Hill Saloon draws a crowd for live music on weekends. One of the oldest buildings in the riverfront district, it once served the gamblers and boatmen who worked the landing below.
Bay St. Louis
The heart of Bay St. Louis is Old Town, where many of the homes and storefronts appear on the National Register of Historic Places. The district is full of boutiques and cafes, among them Harvest Bay Artisan Bakery, a good stop for coffee and a pastry. Take it to go: about a 15-minute walk down is Bay St. Louis Beach, a long stretch of fine white sand.
Out on the water, Cruisin' Tikis Bay St. Louis runs sunset cruises on a tiki-style boat, with BYOB coolers and music while you drift across the bay. Color spreads across the water as the sun goes down, and the trips fill fast on clear evenings.
Water Valley
The railroad made Water Valley. Its downtown grew up around the Illinois Central line that reached town in 1857, and for more than 160 years the tracks carried cotton, wartime send-offs, and everyday commerce through the center of town. Turnage Drug Store has been part of that stretch since 1905, a family-run pharmacy where the old soda fountain still turns out sodas and milkshakes.
A short drive out, the Water Valley Landing Day Use Area opens onto Enid Lake, with trails to hike and water to put a boat on. When it is time to eat, the 15-minute drive to Yukon Ice BBQ ends in ribeye and BBQ nacho fries.
Cleveland
The blues began just outside Cleveland, at least according to B.B. King, who pointed to nearby Dockery Farms as its birthplace. On that Delta cotton plantation, Black laborers including Charley Patton built a musical tradition in the fields and on the commissary porch that carried far beyond the Vicksburg-to-Memphis stretch of the Delta. The plantation and its sawmill still stand, with plaques across the grounds telling the story.
In town, the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi picks up the same story, with a permanent "On the Red Carpet" exhibit of Grammy gowns and suits and interactive galleries on American music. The Mathews-Sanders Sculpture Garden nearby sets work by artists from around the country among its plantings, including a wind harp and a figure playing guitar.
New Albany
New Albany, incorporated in 1850, is the birthplace of William Faulkner, though his family moved to Oxford while he was a boy. The Union County Heritage Museum fills two city blocks near his birth site and covers everything from Chickasaw history to local sports. Its standout is a fossil: a small tooth pulled from a creek bed nearby that turned out to be the first horned dinosaur ever found in the eastern United States, evidence that a Triceratops relative once roamed this ground. The William Faulkner Literary Garden sits behind the museum, planted with species from his novels.
For a meal, Latham's Hamburger Inn is the local institution, known for its doughburgers and onion rings. A nightcap follows at Nico's, an Italian spot pouring specialty cocktails like the Limoncello Spritz.
Seven Towns, One State's Long Memory
What ties these towns together is how close their history still sits to the surface. In Natchez, antebellum bluff-top houses are open for tours and events. In Cleveland, the ground where the blues took shape is a short drive from downtown. In New Albany, a museum case holds the fossil that pushed the known range of horned dinosaurs a thousand miles east. Oxford grew around a university and Water Valley around a railroad, and the marks of both are all over each town's streets. Down on the coast, Ocean Springs and Bay St. Louis make a slower kind of day out of the Gulf. Seven towns, and not one of them rests on scenery alone.
