Neighbourhood
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The headland where the canneries stood for a century and where Mississippi's coastal casino era began in 1992.
Photo: George ArmstrongPublic domain
Point Cadet is where the Biloxi peninsula runs out. Sound on one side, bay on the other, the bridge to Ocean Springs straight ahead, and behind you the whole length of a city built along a beach road. It is the most consequential few blocks in Biloxi and one of the least visited, which is largely because there is not a great deal left to look at.
For a hundred years this was the industrial heart of the coast. The canneries clustered here because the boats came in here, and around them the packers put up rows of small wooden houses for the people who did the shucking and picking. Families from the Dalmatian coast, from central Europe, from the Louisiana bayous, and from the late 1970s a large Vietnamese community that came for cannery work and moved into boat ownership. The Point had its own churches, its own halls and, people here will tell you, its own accent. Somebody from the Point was from the Point before they were from Biloxi.
Then in 1992 the state's first Biloxi casino opened on this same headland, two years after Mississippi legalised dockside gaming. Both of the industries that made modern Biloxi started within a few hundred yards of each other.
What you find today is a Golden Nugget, the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum, a schooner pier, a marina, some housing, and a striking amount of open grass. The surge came straight across this headland on 29 August 2005 and took most of the building stock with it, and two decades on, parts of the Point have not been rebuilt.
Go anyway, and go on foot. It is a short walk, it is the best waterfront in the city, and it is the place where Biloxi's history is most legible — partly because of what stands and partly because of what does not.
Point Cadet is at the eastern end of the Biloxi peninsula. Drive east along US 90 until the beach road reaches the Biloxi Bay bridge, then take the turning down onto the headland and follow signs towards the museum and the casino.
Coming from Ocean Springs, cross the bridge westbound and the Point is immediately on your right as you come off it.
Park at the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum or in the casino garage — self-parking on this coast has generally been free — and walk from there. Everything on the headland is within a few minutes of everything else, which is not true of anywhere else in Biloxi.
There is no useful public transport to the Point. If you are staying mid-strip without a car, it is a short taxi or rideshare rather than a walk, particularly in summer. Amtrak's Gulf Coast service stops in Biloxi, and the station is a short drive west of here.
Industrial neighbourhoods get built the same way everywhere: put the factory where the raw material lands, then house the workforce within walking distance of the gate. On this headland the raw material arrived by boat, so the factories went on the water and the houses went behind them.
Those houses were small, wooden, raised off the ground and built in rows, and they are the reason the Point had a character distinct from the rest of the city. The people in them worked seasonally and hard, and they came from a very specific set of places. Dalmatian families from the Adriatic — a coast with its own long tradition of oystering — arrived in enough numbers to leave surnames all over the local fleet. Central European and Cajun families came for the same work.
The last great arrival was Vietnamese. Families who had been fishing people at home began coming to this coast from about 1977, took cannery jobs, and within about a decade owned a large share of the Mississippi shrimp fleet. The transition was not welcomed everywhere and there was real hostility in those years, which the record should say plainly.
The result was a neighbourhood that was multilingual, Catholic in several accents, and organised entirely around a season. When shrimp were running, the Point worked. When they were not, it did not.
A short list, because it is a small place.
What is not here: a historic district to tour, a row of preserved cannery buildings, or a visitor centre for the neighbourhood. Treat it as a walk with a museum in the middle rather than an attraction with a gate.
Walk the residential streets of the Point and you will pass grass where houses were. Some lots have a driveway and a set of front steps and nothing else. This is the most honest thing on the headland and it deserves to be described rather than edited out.
The surge on 29 August 2005 came across this ground with nothing in front of it. What stood afterwards was concrete; most of the wooden building stock did not survive in any useful sense. Rebuilding on a low headland between two bodies of water then ran into the things that follow a catastrophic flood: revised flood maps, elevation requirements, insurance costs that moved beyond what a cannery-worker's cottage was ever worth, and families who had already moved inland or out of state.
Two decades on, some of this ground has been rebuilt, some has been consolidated into larger developments, and some is still waiting. That is not unique to Biloxi and it is not evidence of neglect. It is what recovery actually looks like on a coast where the economics of rebuilding a small house on the water stopped adding up.
People live here. This is a neighbourhood, not a ruin, and the correct way to look at it is from the public street and the waterfront rather than from someone's driveway with a camera.
Park at the museum, which is the obvious anchor and has the only facilities.
Start at the schooner pier and look back west along the Sound: the casino towers, the beach road, and the lighthouse gap in the skyline. Then walk out to the tip and the plaza area, where the view opens across Biloxi Bay to Ocean Springs and the bridge carries US 90 over the water. If a shrimp boat is coming in you will see it from here before anyone on the beach road does.
Carry on round past the marina and you get the working side: trailers, ice, gear, boats on the hard. Then loop back through the residential streets, which is where the raised houses and the open lots are, and back to the museum. Ninety minutes covers it comfortably with time inside the museum on top.
Two practical notes. There is no shade on this walk to speak of, and the Point catches whatever wind is going — welcome in July, genuinely cold on a January morning with a north wind coming down the bay. And the light here is best in the late afternoon, when the sun is behind you looking east across the bay and full on the boats.
Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Museum
Canneries, schooners, net-making and the Vietnamese shrimp fleet: the museum that explains why Biloxi is here at all.
1.5–2.5 hoursA modest admission charge for adults, with lower rates for children, students and seniors. Schooner sailings are priced separately.130 ft away
Marina
Two sixty-five-foot replicas of the oyster schooners that worked this coast under sail, and you get to help haul the halyards.
2–3 hoursPublic sailings are ticketed at a modest per-person rate, with reduced rates for children. Private charters are priced separately.190 ft away
Entertainment
Mississippi's coastal casino era began on this patch of Point Cadet in 1992, at the quiet end of the strip beside the bay bridge.
1–4 hoursNo charge to enter or walk the public areas. Rooms, dining and parking-adjacent extras are priced separately.0.2 mi away
Water feature
The sheltered estuary behind the peninsula, where the shrimp grow up and the fleet goes to hide from hurricanes.
0.5–4 hoursFree. Public ramps, bridges and shoreline access cost nothing, though some ramps may charge for launching.2.3 mi away
Where this place fits into a day, and the pages that plan one.
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The eastern tip of the Biloxi peninsula, between the Mississippi Sound and Biloxi Bay, beside the US 90 bridge to Ocean Springs. It was the city's cannery district for roughly a century, housing the workforce that processed the coast's oysters and shrimp, and in 1992 it became the site of the first casino in Biloxi. Both of the industries that built the modern city started on this one headland.
Yes, if you understand what you are going to see. There is no preserved historic district and no row of restored cannery buildings — the surge in 2005 took most of the building stock. What there is: the best maritime museum on the coast, a schooner pier, a marina, open waterfront with views across the bay, and a neighbourhood whose history is legible partly through what is missing. Allow an hour on foot plus museum time.
The surge came across the headland on 29 August 2005 with nothing in front of it, and most of the wooden building stock did not survive. What followed was slower than the destruction: revised flood maps, elevation requirements and insurance costs that made rebuilding a small house on low ground between two bodies of water uneconomic for many families. Two decades on, some lots remain open ground. People still live here.
Easily, and it is the right way to see it. The headland is flat and compact, with everything within a few minutes of everything else — which is not true of anywhere else in Biloxi. A loop from the museum out to the tip, round past the marina and back through the residential streets takes about an hour. There is almost no shade, so avoid the middle of a July afternoon.
At the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum, which has its own car park and is the obvious anchor for a visit, or in the Golden Nugget garage. Self-parking at the coast casinos has generally been free. Both leave you within a short walk of the schooner pier, the marina and the waterfront. Read the signage where you stop, since parking arrangements on the coast do get revised.