Mississippi - River Delta, Gulf Coast, and 2.9 Million People
Mississippi holds about 2.9 million residents on 48,430 square miles and ranks among the most rural states in the country. Jackson, the capital and largest city, has roughly 140,000 people and anchors a metro area of about 600,000. The state is defined by two very different regions: the Mississippi River Delta in the northwest, and the Gulf Coast along the south. The Delta is flat, fertile, and historically tied to cotton, while the coast is built around shipbuilding, seafood, and casino tourism in Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis.
The Delta is the birthplace of the blues. Clarksdale, Greenville, and Indianola produced Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and John Lee Hooker, and the region remains a destination for music tourists, with the B.B. King Museum in Indianola and dozens of marker sites along the Mississippi Blues Trail. Cotton is no longer the dominant crop; soybeans, corn, catfish, and poultry now drive the agricultural economy. Mississippi ranks as the top catfish-producing state and one of the leading states in broiler chicken production. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula builds destroyers and amphibious assault ships for the U.S. Navy and is the largest manufacturing employer in the state.
Mississippi legalized dockside casinos along the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River in 1990, and they remain one of the largest sources of state tax revenue. Biloxi alone has nine casinos along the beachfront, rebuilt and relocated onshore after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the offshore barges in 2005. Tunica County, across the Mississippi River from Memphis, was once the third-largest casino market in the country, though several properties have closed in the past decade as competition from Arkansas and Tennessee has grown.
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Mississippi holds about 2.9 million residents on 48,430 square miles and ranks among the most rural states in the country. Jackson, the capital and largest city, has roughly 140,000 people and anchors a metro area of about 600,000. The state is defined by two very different regions: the Mississippi River Delta in the northwest, and the Gulf Coast along the south. The Delta is flat, fertile, and historically tied to cotton, while the coast is built around shipbuilding, seafood, and casino tourism in Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis.
The Delta is the birthplace of the blues. Clarksdale, Greenville, and Indianola produced Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and John Lee Hooker, and the region remains a destination for music tourists, with the B.B. King Museum in Indianola and dozens of marker sites along the Mississippi Blues Trail. Cotton is no longer the dominant crop; soybeans, corn, catfish, and poultry now drive the agricultural economy. Mississippi ranks as the top catfish-producing state and one of the leading states in broiler chicken production. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula builds destroyers and amphibious assault ships for the U.S. Navy and is the largest manufacturing employer in the state.
Mississippi legalized dockside casinos along the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River in 1990, and they remain one of the largest sources of state tax revenue. Biloxi alone has nine casinos along the beachfront, rebuilt and relocated onshore after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the offshore barges in 2005. Tunica County, across the Mississippi River from Memphis, was once the third-largest casino market in the country, though several properties have closed in the past decade as competition from Arkansas and Tennessee has grown.
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