Tupelo was named one of the 10 best small town getaways by USA Today.
The most significant landmark of Tupelo’s modern history is a modest, two-room shotgun house where the King of Rock and Roll was born January 8, 1935. To Elvis Presley fans, this house is the most important house in the world. It was built by Elvis’ father, a dairy farmer, for $180 during the depression.
Elvis never forgot his poor upbringing and in 1957 donated all proceeds from hometown concerts to buy his tiny birthplace and 15 acres surrounding the house, now known as Elvis Presley Park. The Park includes a memory walk where local residents detail their recollections of Elvis; a museum that traces his road to fame using a unique collection of clothes from riding boots to Las Vegas jumpsuit. The chapel is a place for meditation and there is an “Elvis at 13” bronze statue, that portrays him as a young boy in overalls, guitar in hand. It was unveiled on his 67th birthday. He died August 16, 1977. Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum www.elvispresleybirthplace.com
The annual Elvis Presley Festival is Tupelo’s tribute to their most famous son. On the first weekend in June downtown Tupelo is a fun-filled with musicians from around the country playing the music that influenced Elvis Presley’s style. Food vendors, a motor-cycle show, pet parade, movie poster exhibit, recliner race, walking and biking races round out the full family weekend.
From the time he rose to fame, Elvis was a car buff, collecting them and giving them away to friends. The new Tupelo Automobile Museum is a nice compliment to young Elvis and the near-by “Made-for-cruising” NatchezTrace Parkway.
At the Automobile Museum, there are over 100 cars in the collection, from the seven-horsepower models that could barely make it uphill to T-birds, Plymouths and Pontiacs with enough juice to power man’s imagination 40 years after his first date. There are European cars, celebrity cars and ridiculous cars. From the Fabulous Fifties, there is a Corvette the color of Marilyn Monroe’s Technicolor red lips, Mercury and Buick models the color of lemons and Packards and Edsels that really were lemons.
Tupelo broadcasting executive, Frank Spain, in partnership with the city, presents his collection in a way that will interest serious car buffs as well as the mechanically challenged. His cars are lined up chronologically.
The Tupelo Automobile Museum is a 120,000 square foot facility that was especially designed to display over 100 antique and classic cars. Vintage gas station signs set the mood and windows overlook rooms where restoration work is being done.
Visitors can hit a button on a microphone that looks like a transistor radio to hear a story about each car, its engine specs and production history.
Another Tupelo entrepreneur, Dan Franklin, has assembled a different kind of collection. He has opened Tupelo Buffalo Park where he has more than 250 buffalos roaming almost 200 acres. There are also ostriches, camels, Asian water buffalo, donkeys and zebras.
The “monster bus” offers a close-up view, otherwise there is a petting zoo, pony rides and trail rides. Don’t miss Tukota, one of the only three white buffalos believed to live in the United States. www.tupelobuffalopark.com
Before leaving Tupelo area, we visited Natchez Trace Parkway Visitors Center & Headquarters where we learned about this historic and important transportation route. This historic 444-mile route, linking Natchez to Nashville has been designated a National Scenic Byway, an All-American Road and is one of the nation’s most unique national parks.
The scenic Natchez Trace Parkway is renowned for its unspoiled natural beauty. The Trace follows an enchanted route through lush forests into the heart of Mississippi’s past. First used by native Americans thousands of years ago and later a major Trade Route during frontier days, the Trace is lined with markers that point out important sites that detail the fascinating history of this ancient route.
Open year-round for motorists, hikers and cyclists, it provides visitors the opportunity for an unhurried trip through time. www.nps.gov/natc
Holly Springs is a town of 7,000 people, yet it has 64 antebellum properties or roughly one for every 100 residents.
Visitors come by the thousands the last weekend in April each year for the Holly Springs Pilgrimage, which displays many of the beautiful historic homes that feature spiraling staircases, period furnishings and wrought iron fences. Guests are greeted by locals dressed in period costumes who provide detailed history about the homes with famous names such as Walter Place (the home of General Ulysses S. Grant and his family during the Civil War.)
We toured Montrose built in 1858 and the home of the Holly Springs Garden Club. This brick mansion shows influence of classic Greek Revival architecture. The interior features a graceful circular stairway and ornate medallions in the ceilings. The wooded land around Montrose is an arboretum with species of trees marked on the trunks.
Walter Place (1858-1859) combines Gothic and Classical Revival styles, making it architecturally unique in the South.
Strawberry Plains 1851 is a two-story Greek revival home built of hand-made brick. Ancient cedars lead the visitor to the massive tetra style portico supported by four Corinthian columns with cast iron acanthus leaf capitals. This home and its lands have been donated to the National Audubon Society.
The Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery contains more than 1,000 paintings, all by Miss Clark (1875-1957). Only a few are exhibited at a time at the gallery that was constructed to house her works when she bequeathed her estate to Holly Springs. She was the pupil of William Merritt Chase, whose works are also featured. Clark has been increasingly recognized as a notable American impressionist painter. By appointment only 662-252-4211
Graceland TOO also attracts music fans and the curious seven days a week at all hours of the day and night as owner Paul McLeod and his son, Elvis Presley McLeod, offers tours of the tribute to the King of Rock and Roll he has created in his home, just off the town square. Visitors from around the world have toured Graceland TOO, many calling it the greatest tribute to Elvis they’ve ever seen. This one-of-a-kind attraction was built from genuine devotion and love for Elvis. It features memorabilia collected during the past 44 years and is considered the largest of its kind. www.rockabillyhall.com/ElvisLives.
Oxford is a must for anyone with a passion for books, art galleries, shopping and good food.
Oxford there is the Center for the study of Southern Culture and Blues Music Archive Center. The picturesque campus of University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) is famous for having the first African-American graduate to attend a University in 1963, James Meridith. Oxford is a quaint college town immortalized in writing of William Faulkner.
Faulkner fans flock to quaint Oxford, the beautiful Mississippi town. Some say it’s the fascination with what’s left of the Deep South and the Southern psyche. Downtown Oxford still looks like it did when Faulkner used it as a stage for his characters. Nobel prize-winning author, William Faulkner was born in nearby New Albany. He spent most of his adult life at Rowan Oak c.1840 from 1930-1962, his home in Oxford.
Rowan Oak is arguably the least commercial world-famous attraction in the state. It is in a quiet residential neighborhood on the edge of the Mississippi campus, and the directions consist of a single small sign. Visitors are free to roam around the grounds, arbors, smokehouse and alley of cedars as much as they please. Rowan Oak has an honest, rumpled appearance of the author himself. You can view the outline of his famous novel A Fable written in the author’s own hand on his study wall.
Faulkner christened the house “Rowan Oak” after the legend of the mythic Rowan tree, believed by Celtic people to harbor magic powers of safety and protection. While residing there with his wife and child, he wrote masterpieces such as Absalom, Absalom, Light in August, A Fable and The Sound and the Fury. Rowan Oak remained his home until his death in 1962.
At the Faulkner Room in the University of Mississippi Library we learned more about Oxford’s Nobel Prize winning author and saw his Nobel Prize and also browsed through original manuscripts included in the “Rowan Oak Papers” special collection.
With a population of 14,000 students at the University of Mississippi the there is always something going on in Oxford. The square surrounding the Lafayette County Courthouse is home to one of the nation’s best known book stores, Square Books. There are numerous upscale restaurants, pizza parlors with live music, galleries and gift shops..
We visited the research Center for Southern music, history, folklore, literature and culture housed in restored antebellum observatory, and also toured Cedar Oaks, one of Oxford’s oldest antebellum homes built in 1859.
There is an annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference held in July for six days at Rowan Oaks. This popular literary event includes lectures and discussions by scholars and dramatic readings from the works of William Faulkner. www.olemiss.edu/dets/south