Tag: Mississippi

I first visited Ship Island as a child with my family, taking the hour-long ferry out of Gulfport. It is the only barrier island off the coast of Mississippi with ferry access, the only one you can get to if you don’t have your own boat.

Award-winning potter Matt Long is a professor of art at the University of Mississippi and presents ceramics workshops internationally. His functional pieces have appeared in publications such as Ceramics Monthly.

If you can’t visit these establishments, at least you can do the next best thing—re-create their signature drink or dish from the comfort of your home.

Tina Fortenberry wasn’t expecting to find a home away from home when she stepped into the Fairview Inn in 2012. “I walked into the room and was spellbound,” she says.

Before 2017, Laurel, Mississippi, was rarely, if ever, on the minds of people who didn’t live there. It certainly didn’t attract travelers from around the world. But thanks to Ben and Erin Napier, stars of HGTV’s Home Town, it is now a popular destination.

Since Southbound debuted in 2013, our staff and contributors have logged thousands of miles, consumed millions of calories, and taken countless notes and photos to showcase the very best destinations around the region. Although every place we’ve covered is special, some left a particularly powerful impression. Here, we give you the best of the very best, our favorite spots in the South.

“I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Among the most memorable lines penned by Southern playwright Tennessee Williams, it also expresses the reception visitors may expect when touring his birthplace of Columbus, Mississippi.

Driving along the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown Natchez, I pass a small, weathered-wood casino. With its signs for slot machines and table games, the Magnolia Bluffs Casino hints at the fact that chance plays at least a small part in shaping some of the fortunes of this town.

It may seem odd to call a town of 23,000 a cultural destination. But Oxford, Mississippi, is indeed a place of deep and enduring culture. Square Books, which opened on the historic courthouse square in 1979, is one of the nation’s top booksellers. Vishwesh Bhatt, an Indian immigrant at the helm of Oxford’s Snackbar, was a 2018 James Beard finalist for Best Chef in the South.

When people speak of Jackson, Mississippi, the conversation often turns to the past—the complicated civil rights history that has both shamed and shaped the city. But increasingly, they also talk about momentum.