Historic Hotels & Inns in Mississippi

Ways in

Themes in Mississippi

Natchez and what built it

Natchez’s wealth came from enslaved labor: the Park Service calls the mid-19th-century city the epicenter of American capitalism and American slavery. The Forks of the Road market, one mile east of downtown, was the second busiest slave-trading market in the Deep South between 1832 and 1863, by the Park Service’s account, and the William Johnson House, home of a free Black barber who also held people in slavery, is part of Natchez National Historical Park. Cotton money built the houses the city’s stays now fill: Dunleith and Monmouth are National Historic Landmarks, and Monmouth’s history pages name enslaved people who lived there. Canemount, at Lorman, puts guests in the outbuildings of a mid-1850s house.

Vicksburg and the siege

Grant besieged Vicksburg from May 18 to July 4, 1863. Federal gunboats shelled Cedar Grove, where the inn shows a cannonball still lodged in the parlor wall; Duff Green Mansion was a Confederate hospital; and the Wilson family lived at Anchuca through the 47 days. The Park Service counts 1,402 enslaved people in the city in 1860 and says as many as 20,000 came seeking freedom after the surrender, and the Old Court House Museum says 100 enslaved artisans built its courthouse.

Jackson, Meridian and the 1920s towers

The 12-story Edwards Hotel opened in Jackson on December 29, 1923, and Wikipedia says Okeh Records recorded blues sessions in a room there in December 1930. It closed in 1967 as the King Edward, stood empty for about 40 years and reopened as a Hilton Garden Inn in 2009. In Meridian, the Threefoot family’s 16-story Art Deco office tower was completed in 1929 and is now a Tribute Portfolio hotel. In Starkville, N. W. Overstreet’s Hotel Chester dates from 1925.

The Delta’s downtown hotels

Greenwood’s Alluvian fills the Hotel Irving of about 1917, which operated into the 1980s before Viking Range Corp. transformed the building in 2003. Clarksdale’s Travelers Hotel began in the early 1920s as a bare-bones overnight stop for railroad workers, and a cooperative, the Coahoma Collective, now runs it as an arts-driven hotel with no televisions in the rooms.

Road trip

Highway 61, Clarksdale to Natchez

Clarksdale

Start at Travelers Hotel, a stop for railroad workers in the early 1920s. Guests must be 25 or older to rent a room.

Vicksburg

Drive the Military Park’s 16-mile Tour Road, then pick an inn in Old Town or the Garden District from our Vicksburg guide.

Lorman

Stop at Canemount, where guests stay in converted outbuildings, not the main house.

Natchez

Give Natchez two nights: see Forks of the Road and the William Johnson House, and pick a stay from our Natchez guide.

Context

History and architecture

Mississippi’s historic stays follow its money and its wars. The French founded Fort Rosalie at Natchez in 1716, and Mississippi became the 20th state in 1817. Cotton money, made by enslaved labor, then built the great houses of Natchez: The Burn in 1834 and Dunleith about 1855, with Monmouth remodeled in the Greek Revival style about 1853. The siege of Vicksburg ran from May 18 to July 4, 1863, and the Military Park there was established in 1899. Downtown hotels came next: the Hotel Irving in Greenwood about 1917, Travelers in Clarksdale about 1921, the Edwards Hotel in Jackson in 1923 and Hotel Chester in Starkville in 1925. Meridian’s Threefoot tower, finished in 1929 as offices, became a hotel only after a 2015 sale. Several stood empty before they were restored: the White House Hotel in Biloxi closed in 1988 and reopened in 2014.