Mississippi Gulf Coast Road Trip – A Journey of Discovery Along the Secret Coast
Bay St Louis
You’ll find the Infinity Science Center and Mississippi Welcome Center turnoff, two miles from the Louisiana state line. Here’s where your Mississippi Gulf Coast road trip begins. Turn off I-10, and 20-minutes later, you arrive in the historically French town of Bay St Louis.
The Beach Blvd Scenic Byway runs north and south through downtown Bay St Louis. Just south of town is the city of Waveland. Known as ‘The Hospitality City,’ it’s the only community of the Gulf Coast that prohibits commercial buildings on its beachfront.
The 2-mile St Louis Bay Bridge was rebuilt entirely in 2007, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina. It’s an architectural wonder, complete with a separate pedestrian lane across the entire span. On the other side of the bridge sits the village of Pass Christian.
Gulfport is the largest city on the Mississippi coast and the second-largest city in the state; only it didn’t start that way. Gulfport is inextricably linked to Hattiesburg by William H. Hardy, a railroad developer from the late 1800s.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast seafood industry lives and breathes in Biloxi. You can visit the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum and learn about the revolutionary shrimp peeling machine that originated from these parts or take a surprisingly educational tour on the Biloxi Shrimping Trip.
The Biloxi Bay Bridge connects Biloxi to Ocean Springs, a charming little town that restores your faith in the great American road trip. If you never leave US-90, you’ll never know what makes Ocean Springs special, and once you do, you might never want to leave.
William Faulkner once said, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” He wrote his second novel, Mosquitoes, and started on his third, The Wild Palms, while staying at a beach cottage in Pascagoula.