Neighbourhood
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An oyster harbour, a shaded drive of rebuilt houses and the site of the highest storm surge ever measured in the United States.
Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Jon HydePublic domain
Locals call it the Pass, and the drive west from Biloxi takes about forty minutes along the beach road. What you arrive at is a small town of fewer than six thousand people on a peninsula with the Mississippi Sound to the south, the Bay of St Louis to the west and bayou behind it. There is no casino. There is no strip. There is a harbour full of working boats, a long avenue of live oaks, and one of the plainest lessons in American hurricane history.
Pass Christian was a resort before Biloxi was. Wealthy New Orleans families built summer houses along Scenic Drive facing the water through the nineteenth century, and the Southern Yacht Club — the first in the South and the second in the United States — was established here in 1849 before it moved along the coast to New Orleans eight years later.
Then the storms. In August 1969 Hurricane Camille destroyed the Richelieu Apartments on the beachfront and eight people who stayed in the building died. In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina put a high water mark of 27.8 feet on this town, the highest storm surge ever recorded in the United States. Of roughly eight thousand homes in the city, all but about five hundred were damaged or destroyed. Thirteen police officers were trapped inside the public library as the water came in and survived the night on its roof.
The population tells the rest. It was 6,579 in 2000, fell to 4,613 by 2010, and had recovered to 5,686 by 2020. Many of the antebellum houses on Scenic Drive were lost, and many of the buildings there now are newer, raised higher, and set on the same lots under the same trees.
What has come back is the seafood. The harbour works. The oyster trade that once defined this stretch of coast has had a much harder time of it, and the reasons are worth understanding before you order a dozen.
Take US 90 west from Biloxi and stay on it. The beach road runs through Gulfport, Long Beach and then into Pass Christian, roughly twenty-five miles and about forty minutes without traffic. Interstate 10 is faster and misses the entire point of the drive.
The harbour is signed off the beach road at the western end of town, with parking beside it. Scenic Drive runs parallel to US 90 a block inland; it is a residential street with no visitor parking, so park at the harbour or at the waterfront and walk.
There is no useful public transport for this trip. The coast transit service runs along the beach road but not at a frequency that suits a half day out, and there is nothing to walk to between the towns.
Coming back at sunset, the beach road faces you into the light with the Sound on your right, which is the best forty minutes of driving on this coast.
Mississippi was harvesting close to half a million sacks of oysters a year before the last two decades happened to it, and the western Sound off Pass Christian held the best of the public reefs.
Three things hit them in sequence. Katrina buried reefs under sediment in 2005. The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 closed grounds and put oil into the system. Then came the freshwater: repeated openings of the Bonnet Carré Spillway upriver push enormous volumes of Mississippi River water into the Sound, and oysters cannot survive extended low salinity. Mortality on some Mississippi reefs has been reported at 90 to 95 per cent.
The practical result for a visitor is that the oysters you are served on this coast may well have come from Louisiana, Texas or Florida rather than from the water in front of you, and a restaurant that tells you so plainly is being honest rather than apologetic.
The harbour still lands shrimp, crab and fish, and the seafood markets around it are the reason a good number of people drive over from Biloxi on a Saturday morning. Ask what is local that day, and take the answer at face value.
Scenic Drive runs east to west behind the beach road under a canopy of live oaks, and it is the reason most visitors come. It is a slow, shaded street of large houses facing the water across wide lawns.
Read it carefully and it tells you what happened. Some houses are nineteenth-century survivors. Many are not: they are newer buildings on old lots, raised well above the ground on piers, set back behind oaks that are older than anything built around them. There are empty lots with steps leading up to nothing, and there are foundations left in place as a decision rather than as neglect.
The oaks themselves are the continuity. Live oaks take salt water better than almost anything else that grows on this coast, and a number of them along here went through both Camille and Katrina.
Drive it slowly, and park and walk a stretch if you have half an hour. This is a residential street, not an attraction, and the houses are people's homes. Look from the road.
Forty minutes each way along US 90 makes this a half day rather than an afternoon. The sequence that works: leave Biloxi mid-morning, drive the beach road west rather than taking the interstate, and stop at Pass Christian harbour first while the boats are still in.
Give the harbour and the seafood markets an hour. Then drive Scenic Drive, walk a stretch of it, and finish at War Memorial Park on the waterfront, which was the staging ground for the town's recovery after 2005 and is now an ordinary public park with an extraordinary recent history.
Lunch is the obvious anchor, and it should be seafood. The town has a small number of places and they keep small-town hours, so a Monday in February is a different proposition from a Saturday in June.
If you are continuing, the Bay of St Louis bridge is minutes further west and the town of Bay St Louis on the far side is the next stop along the same theme: art galleries, old buildings, and a waterfront that was flattened and rebuilt.
Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Neighbourhood
Mississippi's second city, twelve miles west along the beach road, holding the Ship Island ferry, the airport and the aquarium.
1–5 hoursFree to visit. Jones Park and the harbour cost nothing; the ferry, the aquarium and the casinos do not.9.8 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.11.3 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.13.7 mi away
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.18.5 mi away
Where this place fits into a day, and the pages that plan one.
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About twenty-five miles west, or roughly forty minutes along US 90 through Gulfport and Long Beach. Interstate 10 inland is faster but takes you away from the water, and on this particular trip the drive is a large part of the value. There is no practical public transport option; a car is effectively required for a half day in the Pass.
A high water mark of 27.8 feet was recorded here in August 2005, the highest storm surge ever measured in the United States. Of roughly eight thousand homes in the city, all but about five hundred were damaged or destroyed, and thirteen police officers trapped in the public library survived the night on its roof. The population fell from 6,579 in 2000 to 4,613 in 2010, and had recovered to 5,686 by 2020.
If you want a quiet half day with a working harbour, good seafood and a long shaded street of houses, yes. If you are looking for shops, attractions or nightlife, no. The Pass has none of those and does not pretend to. It is the clearest place on this coast to understand what Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005 actually did, and it is a pleasant lunch either way.
Often not, and a good restaurant will tell you. Mississippi's public oyster reefs were hit in sequence by Katrina sediment in 2005, the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 and repeated Bonnet Carré Spillway openings that flood the Mississippi Sound with river freshwater; mortality on some reefs has been reported at 90 to 95 per cent. Shrimp, crab and fish landed at the Pass Christian harbour are a safer bet for something genuinely local.