Map of Mississippi (MS)

Natchez, Mississippi, river-boat near the Natchez-Vidalia Bridge

Casino boat on the Mississippi River at Natchez, Mississippi, with the Natchez-Vidalia Bridge in the background. The bridge over the Mississippi River connects the cities of Natchez, Mississippi, and Vidalia, Louisiana. The casino boat Isle of Capri ceased operations in 2015.
Image: Carol M. Highsmith

Mississippi's new State Flag (adopted in 2021)

About Mississippi

Where in the United States is Mississippi? Location map of the State of Mississippi in the US.

Mississippi, one of the 50 US states, is situated in the Southern United States, known as the 'Dixie' region.

The state is named after the Mississippi River, which runs along its western boundary. The name "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe word "misi-ziibi," meaning "great river" or "gathering of waters."

Mississippi's official nickname is the Magnolia State. Mississippi is part of the Bible Belt, a region of the southern and Midwestern US where Protestant fundamentalism is widely practiced.

Mississippi borders the state of Tennessee to the north. The Tennessee River defines a short section of the Mississippi/Alabama border at its northeastern corner; the remaining part of the state border is more or less a straight line.
The line cuts in half what was formerly the entire Mississippi Territory.

The lower Mississippi River forms the state's border with Arkansas and a section of the border with Louisiana in the west; the Pearl River forms the southern part of the Mississippi/Louisiana border.

Mississippi State Map

General Map of Mississippi, United States.

The detailed map shows the US state of Mississippi with boundaries, the location of the state capital Jackson, major cities and populated places, rivers and lakes, interstate highways, principal highways, and railroads.

You are free to use this map for educational purposes (fair use); please refer to the Nations Online Project.

More about the State of Mississippi

Short history

Topographic Map of Mississippi. (click map to enlarge)

Inhabited by local natives for thousands of years, Mississippi became a French colony in the first half of the 18th century. The French ceded the area to Britain in 1763.

Mississippi Territory was organized on 7 April 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina; it was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the U.S. and Spain.

The United States obtained the territory south of the 31st parallel as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The whole area of Mississippi, except the region south of the 31st parallel, was included in the original territory of the United States.

On 10th December 1817, the western half of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Mississippi, as the 20th state.

The eastern half became the Alabama Territory until its admittance to the Union as the State of Alabama on 14 December 1819.

Area
The state covers an area of 125,438 km² (48,432 sq mi), ^[1] making Mississippi about half the size of the United Kingdom.

Compared with other US states, Mississippi is five and a half times larger as New Jersey, but it would fit into Texas five and a half times.

The state lies entirely in the Central Lowland of the US mainland; its flat landscape is crisscrossed by many rivers.

Mississippi is located within two major regions in the United States: the Gulf Coastal Plain, a generally flat, broad, coastal area along the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, in the western part of the state, known as the Mississippi Delta, and sometimes called the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta.

In the southeast, Mississippi has a 120 km (75 mi) long coastline at the Gulf of Mexico. The coast features a number of large bays, including the Bay of Saint Louis, Biloxi Bay, and Pascagoula Bay.

The urban metropolitan zone along the coast is Gulfport–Biloxi–Pascagoula, a combined statistical area with an estimated population of 400,000.

The Mississippi District of the Gulf Islands National Seashore features natural beaches, some historic sites, wildlife sanctuaries, the Mississippi Sound, and the Gulf Islands, which are only accessible by boat.

Main Geographic Regions of Mississippi

Ground fog on an autumn morning near Columbus, Mississippi.
Image: Roger Smith

Mississippi is divided into six major geographic regions: the Delta, the North Central Hills (or Red Clay Hills, or simply, the Hills), the Appalachian Foothills, the Black Prairie, the Piney Woods, and the Gulf Coast.

1. The Mississippi Delta in the eastern part of the state is not a delta, but in reality, a two hundred miles long alluvial plain created by regular flooding by the Mississippi and the Yazoo rivers.
Before colonization, the Delta was covered in hardwood forest, but European settlers developed it soon into one of the most fertile cotton-growing areas in the nation.

2. The Loess Bluffs or Loess Hills, in the eastern rim of the Delta, is a narrow strip of hills and sharp bluffs along the lower Mississippi Valley, formed by windswept sand and clay deposits in the last ice age.

Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, where NASA tests a new Space Launch System, NASA's new heavy-lift rocket, the Orion spacecraft.
Image: NASA

3. The North Central Hills (also known as the Red Clay Hills) is a region situated in central-north of the state; the area got its name from the red color of its soil and the clay deposits there. The red clay soil supports only small farms.

4. To the east of the Central Hills are the Appalachian Foothills, a small portion of the Appalachians, an area in the extreme northeastern corner of the state. The hilly landscape and rocky soil allow only for small farming.

Mississippi's highest elevation is in this area, Woodall Mountain, a hill with an altitude of just 246 m (800 ft).

5. To the south of the Appalachian foothills are four distinctive landforms; the Tombigbee Hills are hills along the border with Alabama, now covered with pine and hardwood forests.
The Pontotoc Ridge is a highland area along the Central Hills, the Black Prairie, a region with fertile black soil, excellent for agriculture, and the Flatwoods, a low-lying narrow region with heavy clay soils.

6. Most of southern Mississippi lies in the gently rolling Southern Pine Hills (Piney Woods).

Rivers and Lakes

The Pascagoula River in Mississippi is the only unaffected (or nearly so) river flowing from the United States into the Gulf of Mexico.
Image: Visit Mississippi

Mississippi's major rivers are, besides the Mississippi, the Big Black River, a tributary of the Mississippi, which flows entirely in the state.
The Pearl River is the longest river that is entirely within Mississippi, and the Yazoo River, a Mississippi tributary, marks the eastern boundary of the Mississippi Delta.

Largest Lakes
Pickwick Lake, a reservoir at the Tennessee River, the lake is in three states Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The lake is the north end of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which provides a water transportation route to the Gulf of Mexico.

Grenada Lake, the reservoir at the Yalobusha River, was constructed to help control flooding along the Yazoo River Basin.

Sardis Lake is a 400 km² reservoir at the Little Tallahatchie River.

Coniferous trees at Bluff Lake at the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Mississippi

Coniferous trees at Bluff Lake at the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, the woodland refuge in Noxubee County offers native wildlife and migratory birds, and areas for fishing, hiking, and hunting.
Image: Roger Smith

Climate
Mississippi's climate is subtropical humid, with long summers and short, mild winters.

Highest point
The highest elevation in Mississippi is Woodall Mountain, a hill of 246 m (800 ft) in Tishomingo County in the northeastern part of the state.

Population

Rendered image of Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Mississippi

Rendered image of the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson. The Beaux Arts style building houses the Mississippi Legislature. Image: Google

Mississippi has a population of just 2,94 million people (est. 2022). ^[2]

The capital and largest city is Jackson. The second-largest city is Gulfport, a major port on the Mississippi Sound (Gulf Coast).

Other major cities (with a population of more than 40,000) are Southaven, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, Hattiesburg, (a city that played a key role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s) ^[3], Biloxi, and Meridian.

Race and Ethnic groups
The population of Mississippi is composed of 56.4% Caucasians (white), 37.8% African Americans, 3.4% Hispanics or Latinos, 1.1% Asians, and 0.6% Native Americans. ^[4]

Busiest airports in the state are Jackson–Evers International Airport (IATA code: JAN) and Gulfport–Biloxi International Airport (IATA code: GPT).

Cities and Towns in Mississippi

The map shows the location of following cities and towns in Mississippi:

The Old Warren County Courthouse in Vicksburg, Mississippi, is now a Civil War Museum.
Image: OzarksRazorback

Capital and largest city is Jackson (173,000)
Gulfport (70,000), Southaven (50,000), Hattiesburg (47,000), Biloxi (45,000)
Population figures in 2014

Other cities and towns in Mississippi:

Aberdeen, Batesville, Belzoni, Brookhaven, Canton, Clarksdale, Cleveland, Collins, Columbia, Columbus, Corinth, Forest, Greenville, Greenwood, Grenada, Hazlehurst, Holly Springs, Indianola, Kosciusko, Laurel, Louisville, Magee, McComb, Meridian, Monticello, Natchez, New Albany, Oxford, Pascagoula, Philadelphia, Picayune, Senatobia, Starkville, Tupelo, Vicksburg, Water Valley, Waynesboro, and Yazoo City.