Mississippi State Map

Regions of Mississippi

Mississippi is low and gently rolling; no point in the state reaches 1,000 ft. Its regions are defined more by soil and rivers than by mountains.

The Delta

The Yazoo–Mississippi Delta is the flat, fertile floodplain between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the northwest, stretching from the Memphis area south to Vicksburg. Greenville, Clarksdale and Greenwood are its main towns; cotton, soybeans and catfish farming dominate, and the region is closely tied to the history of the blues. US 61, the “Blues Highway,” runs through it.

North Mississippi hills

• DeSoto County: fast-growing Memphis suburbs, including Southaven, Olive Branch and Horn Lake.
• Northeast hills: Tupelo (birthplace of Elvis Presley), Oxford (University of Mississippi) and Corinth. Woodall Mountain, the highest point at 806 ft, is in Tishomingo County in the far northeast corner.
• Golden Triangle: Columbus, Starkville (Mississippi State University) and West Point near the Alabama line.

Central Mississippi

Jackson stands on the Pearl River, with the Ross Barnett Reservoir to its northeast and suburbs such as Clinton, Madison, Pearl and Brandon around it. To the west, Vicksburg overlooks the Mississippi River; its Civil War siege of 1863 is preserved at Vicksburg National Military Park. Meridian is the main city of east-central Mississippi.

Piney Woods and the southwest

Longleaf and loblolly pine forests cover much of the south-central state around Hattiesburg and Laurel. In the southwest, Natchez sits on bluffs above the Mississippi; it is the southern end of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a National Park Service road that runs about 444 miles northeast to Nashville, Tennessee.

Gulf Coast

Gulfport, Biloxi, Ocean Springs and Pascagoula line the shore of Mississippi Sound. Offshore barrier islands such as Ship Island, Horn Island and Petit Bois Island are part of Gulf Islands National Seashore. Hurricane Katrina came ashore near the Louisiana line on August 29, 2005, and caused severe damage along the entire Mississippi coast.

Rivers and borders

The Mississippi River forms the whole western border, facing Arkansas in the north and Louisiana in the south. Below the 31st parallel the line with Louisiana follows the Pearl River to the Gulf. Other major rivers include the Yazoo, the Big Black and the Pascagoula. In the northeast, the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, opened in 1985, links the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River and the port of Mobile, Alabama.

Major highways

• I-55: from the Tennessee line at Southaven through Grenada, Jackson and McComb to Louisiana; it is the main north–south route.
• I-20: Vicksburg to Jackson and Meridian, continuing into Alabama.
• I-59: from the Louisiana line near Picayune through Hattiesburg and Laurel to Meridian, where it joins I-20.
• I-10: across the Gulf Coast through Pascagoula, Biloxi and Gulfport.
• I-22 and I-269: the Memphis area to Tupelo and on to Birmingham, Alabama; and part of an outer loop around Memphis through DeSoto and Marshall counties.
• US 49, US 61 and US 45: Gulfport–Hattiesburg–Jackson–Delta; Natchez–Vicksburg–Clarksdale; and Meridian–Columbus–Tupelo–Corinth in the east.
• Natchez Trace Parkway: a two-lane scenic road, closed to commercial trucking, from Natchez past the Jackson area and Tupelo into Alabama and Tennessee.