Neighbourhood
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Mississippi's second city, twelve miles west along the beach road, holding the Ship Island ferry, the airport and the aquarium.
Visitors book Biloxi and then discover that three of the things they booked it for are in Gulfport. The ferry to Ship Island sails from the small craft harbour here. The airport with the two city names on it is here. So is the aquarium. The two cities run into one another along twelve miles of US 90 with no visible boundary, and the drive between them takes about twenty minutes when the highway is behaving.
They are not the same place, though. Biloxi is a narrow peninsula with a casino frontage and three centuries of settlement behind it. Gulfport was invented, and recently: founded in 1887 as the end of a railway line, then bankrolled through the 1890s by a Pennsylvania oil man named Joseph T. Jones who paid for the railroad, the harbour and the dredging of a deep-water channel that opened in 1902. The point of it was yellow pine. In 1906 alone the port shipped more than 293 million feet of lumber cut from the forests inland, until the forests ran out.
The port is still the centre of gravity, and it is a working one — containers, bananas, industrial cargo — which gives the Gulfport waterfront a character Biloxi's does not have. Jones Park wraps around the small craft harbour beside it, and the ferry to the barrier islands leaves from that basin between mid-March and the end of October.
With 72,926 residents at the last census, Gulfport is the second-largest city in Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed 9,571 houses here in 2005, and the recovery followed the same pattern as Biloxi's: newer buildings, wider setbacks, and a waterfront that is more open than it used to be.
For a visitor, the honest summary is that Gulfport is not a destination in the way Biloxi is. It is the place you drive to for a boat, a plane, an aquarium or a children's museum, and it is worth an hour around the harbour while you are there.
US 90, the beach road, runs the whole way from Biloxi to Gulfport and is the pleasant route: twelve miles with the Mississippi Sound on your left the entire way, about twenty minutes without traffic. Interstate 10 inland is faster at rush hour and duller.
The Gulfport small craft harbour and Jones Park sit at the junction of US 90 and US 49, which is the main road north to the interstate and the airport. If you are aiming for the ferry, that junction is the landmark to navigate to.
Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport is about ten minutes north of the beach road on US 49. The coast transit service runs along US 90 between the two cities, but headways are long and it is not a practical way to catch a boat with a fixed departure time.
Amtrak's Mardi Gras Service between New Orleans and Mobile stops in both Gulfport and Biloxi, which makes the hop between them possible by train, though the timetable is new and worth checking rather than assuming.
This is the mistake people make, and it costs them a morning. The passenger ferry to West Ship Island — the barrier island with the fort, the clear Gulf water and the boardwalk — sails from the Gulfport small craft harbour, in the basin beside Jones Park at the foot of US 49. Nothing leaves from Biloxi.
From a Biloxi hotel that means allowing at least half an hour of driving before the departure time, plus parking, plus the queue, and the boat does not wait. The crossing itself is around an hour each way.
The service is seasonal, generally mid-March to the end of October, operated by an authorised concessionaire of the National Park Service. Schedules vary by month and by day of the week, sailings are cancelled in bad weather, and the last boat back is the last boat back.
Book ahead in July and August, and check the sailing on the morning rather than the night before. Gulf weather turns fast, and a cancellation on the water here is a safety decision rather than a commercial one.
If you have time before a ferry or a flight, the harbour area is the part of Gulfport worth walking. Jones Park runs along the waterfront beside the small craft basin, with open lawn, a splash area, a playground and a view across to the commercial port on the other side of the channel.
The working port is the thing that distinguishes this waterfront. Cranes, container stacks and ships under load sit a few hundred yards from a public park, and on this coast that combination is unusual enough to be interesting rather than grim. Watching a ship come into a channel dredged in the 1890s for a lumber trade that no longer exists is a better history lesson than most plaques.
The charter fleet works out of the same basin, which is where much of the coast's inshore fishing business is booked from.
Downtown Gulfport sits inland of the harbour along 25th Avenue, a few blocks of restaurants and bars that are quieter than Biloxi's casino frontage on any night of the week. If you want an evening that is not a casino floor, it is a reasonable alternative.
| Reason to come | Where | Worth a special trip? |
|---|---|---|
| Ship Island ferry | Small craft harbour, Jones Park | Yes, in season. The island is the best thing on this coast |
| Mississippi Aquarium | East Beach Boulevard | Yes, for families or a wet day |
| Lynn Meadows Discovery Center | Mississippi City, north of the beach road | Yes, for children under about nine |
| Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport | Inland, north of the city | You have no choice |
| Island View Casino | Beachfront | Only if you want a casino that is not in Biloxi |
| Jones Park and the harbour | Waterfront at US 49 | As an hour attached to something else |
The beach along the Gulfport waterfront is the same man-made strip that runs through Biloxi: built in the early 1950s, fronting the Mississippi Sound rather than the open Gulf, and no clearer here than there. If you drove west expecting better water, you will not find it until you get on a boat.
Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Park
A barrier island twelve miles offshore with clear Gulf water, a brick fort, and an anchorage that shaped three centuries here.
4–7 hoursThe island itself carries no entrance fee. Getting there does — the ferry is a ticketed service, and a private charter costs considerably more.12.8 mi away
Entertainment
Five and a half acres of aquarium on the Gulfport beach road, opened fifteen years to the day after the storm that emptied it.
2–4 hoursPaid admission, with child and senior rates and annual memberships available.1.5 mi away
Museum
A children's museum in a 1915 schoolhouse with seven and a half acres of outdoor play behind it, twenty minutes west of Biloxi.
2–5 hoursPaid admission per person, with under-ones generally free and memberships available.4 mi away
Neighbourhood
An oyster harbour, a shaded drive of rebuilt houses and the site of the highest storm surge ever measured in the United States.
2–5 hoursFree. The harbour, Scenic Drive and the waterfront parks cost nothing.9.8 mi away
Where this place fits into a day, and the pages that plan one.
Guide hub
Biloxi is confusing for about an hour and then it makes complete sense. You arrive on a four-lane highway with water on one side and casino towers…
Guide hub
Almost everything on this list is on one road or reached from it. US 90 runs the length of the Biloxi peninsula with the Mississippi Sound on the…
Things to do
Almost everyone who books this coast arrives with a picture in their head of clear green water, and almost everyone finds something else. The sand…
Plan your trip
The mistake people make here is not choosing the wrong way to travel. It is assuming that because everything sits on one road, everything is close…
Things to do
Biloxi sits in the middle of a coast that runs in a straight line, which makes it an unusually good base. Interstate 10 runs east and west a few…
Guide
Biloxi sits on Interstate 10 between two great southern cities, with a national seashore and a rocket test site in between. Here is what each one actually costs you in time.
8 min readCorinne Ladner
Guide
Twenty-six miles of engineered sand, no surf, brown water and no shade. Here is how to use it well, where the real Gulf beaches are, and when to admit you want a different coast.
9 min readRhett Vuong
Guide
Eight casino resorts sit inside the city limits because of two changes in Mississippi law, thirty-five years apart. What that means for a visitor who may not gamble at all.
8 min readAdeline Boudreaux
About twelve miles, or roughly twenty minutes along US 90, the beach road, with the Mississippi Sound beside you the whole way. Interstate 10 inland is quicker in heavy traffic but has nothing to look at. There is no visible boundary between the two cities; the beachfront simply continues, which is why visitors often do not realise they have crossed from one to the other.
Gulfport. The passenger ferry to West Ship Island sails from the small craft harbour beside Jones Park, at the junction of US 90 and US 49, and nothing departs from Biloxi. Allow at least half an hour of driving from a Biloxi hotel, plus parking and boarding time. The service is seasonal, generally mid-March to the end of October, and sailings are cancelled in poor weather.
As a destination in its own right, not especially. As the place that holds the Ship Island ferry, the aquarium, the children's museum and the airport, you will almost certainly go. The harbour and Jones Park are worth an hour attached to one of those, and downtown Gulfport is a quieter evening than the Biloxi casino frontage if that is what you want.
No. It is the same beach. The sand strip along the Mississippi coast was built in the early 1950s and runs continuously through both cities, fronting the shallow Mississippi Sound rather than the open Gulf. Water clarity is a function of the Sound, not of which city you are standing in. Clear Gulf water on this coast means going out to the barrier islands.