Mississippi

I

Introduction

Mississippi, one of the southern states of the United States, bordered on the north by Tennessee; on the east by Alabama; on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana; and on the west by Louisiana and Arkansas. The Mississippi River forms almost all of the western boundary, and the Pearl River forms part of the southern boundary.

Mississippi entered the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state. Its economy was mainly agricultural until the middle third of the 20th century, when manufacturing became the dominant economic sector; service industries have become increasingly important in recent decades. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, resided there. The name of the state is taken from that of the Mississippi River, the name of which is derived from an Algonquian term for “big river”. Mississippi is known as the “Magnolia State”.

II

Land and Resources

Mississippi has an area of 125,060 sq km (48,286 sq mi). The state is roughly rectangular in shape, and its extreme dimensions are about 530 km (330 mi) from north to south and about 290 km (180 mi) from east to west. The state’s coastline is 71 km (44 mi) long.

A

Physical Geography

Most of Mississippi is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain, and the rest of the state is made up of a section of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The East Gulf Coastal Plain is generally composed of low hills. The coastline is separated from the Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow Mississippi Sound. The Mississippi Alluvial Plain, known also as the Delta, is narrow in the south and widens north of Vicksburg.

The most important river is the Mississippi; its chief tributaries in the state are the Yazoo and Big Black rivers. Much of central and eastern Mississippi is drained by streams flowing south to the Gulf of Mexico. These include the Pearl, Pascagoula, and Tombigbee rivers.

Mississippi has many lakes, the largest of which have been created by dams on rivers. Among such bodies of water are Ross Barnett Reservoir, on the Pearl River; Arkabutla Lake, on the Coldwater River; Grenada Lake, on the Yalobusha River; and Pickwick Lake, on the Tennessee River.

B

Climate

Mississippi has a warm, humid climate, with long summers and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 28° C (82° F) in July and about 9° C (48° F) in January. The recorded temperature in Mississippi has ranged from -28.3° C (-19° F), in 1966 at Corinth in the north-east, to 46.1°C (115° F), in 1930 at Holly Springs in the north. Mississippi is often struck by tornadoes, especially during the period from February to May.