Jackson, TN
The anchor of Casey Jones Village, and the reason the village exists: the Shaw family opened an antique museum with a lunch counter in 1965, and when the Casey Jones Museum faced financial ruin in 1978, Clark Shaw partnered with the city to move it, the engineer's original 1870s home, and a replica of Engine 382 onto the land around his store. Three generations later, the Southern-soul buffet runs 14 or 15 vegetables and seven or eight meats daily, with homemade cracklin' cornbread; the restaurant bills it as a USA Today Top 10 Buffet in the USA three years running. Thousands of antiques decorate the store, including a moonshine still signed by Popcorn Sutton hanging from the ceiling. Open daily from 6:30 am (8 on Sundays), with Sunday service ending at 5. Walk the village after lunch: climb aboard the 382 and ring the bell.
Established 1941 as McKellar Field, named for Senator Kenneth Douglas McKellar (1869-1957), the longtime Tennessee senator who pushed the Civil Works Administration to build it. WWII primary pilot training base — the 68th Flying Training Detachment trained cadets here in PT-17 Stearman biplanes. Renamed McKellar-Sipes Regional in the 1970s to add the name of Major Robert Ray "Buster" Sipes, a Jackson native and US Air Force test pilot killed in 1969 when his RF-101 Voodoo crashed on takeoff from RAF Upper Heyford, England. Officially renamed Jackson Regional Airport in December 2024 for marketing reach, though the McKellar-Sipes legacy continues. Casey Jones — the legendary railroad engineer who died in 1900 — lived in Jackson; the Casey Jones Village sits 4 miles east.
On April 3, 1968, an Eastern Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Memphis was delayed before takeoff while the aircraft was searched for a bomb. The threat was specific — directed at one passenger on the manifest, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The plane was eventually cleared. Dr. King flew in to Memphis to lead a march supporting the Memphis sanitation strike. That night at Mason Temple he gave the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. The next evening, at 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, he was shot on the second-floor balcony of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel. The Lorraine Motel is still there, at 450 Mulberry Street in the South Main Arts District of downtown Memphis. The balcony is preserved exactly as it was. The room is preserved exactly as it was. A simple wreath marks the spot where Dr. King fell. Two 1960s cars sit in their original parking spots below the balcony — a 1968 Cadillac and a 1959 Dodge that were there that evening. Around the motel, a full museum complex has been built: the National Civil Rights Museum, opened in 1991 and substantially expanded since. The main exhibit traces the entire American civil rights story from the slave trade through the 1968 strike and beyond — 260 artifacts, 40 films, the Rosa Parks bus, a Greyhound Freedom Riders bus, a Memphis sanitation truck, an authentic 1960s lunch counter. Across Mulberry Street is the rooming house from which James Earl Ray fired the shot; that building is part of the complex too, with the bathroom window preserved and the actual rifle on display. The museum is one of only five U.S. sites accredited as an International Site of Conscience. A reimagined Legacy Experience exhibit opens May 16, 2026, marking the museum's 35th anniversary — five new galleries on poverty, education, housing, gender equity, and nonviolence, tracing the civil rights movement from 1968 to the present.
After the White House, Graceland is the most-visited private home in America. Elvis Presley bought the Colonial Revival mansion on a 14-acre estate in 1957, at 22, for about $100,000, and lived there until he died in 1977 — he is buried in the Meditation Garden beside the pool, alongside his parents and grandmother. The house is a perfect time capsule of mid-century excess: the Jungle Room with its green shag carpet on the ceiling and Polynesian furniture, the yellow-and-blue TV room with three sets built into the wall (a habit he picked up from LBJ), the racquetball building, his cars and two airplanes including the Convair 880 "Lisa Marie." A modern entertainment complex across the street holds the rest of the collection.
Two small studios in northwest Alabama produced a wildly disproportionate share of 20th-century American popular music. FAME Studios at 603 East Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals (founded 1959 by Rick Hall) recorded Aretha Franklin's breakthrough "I Never Loved a Man" (1967), Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally" and "Land of 1000 Dances," Etta James's "Tell Mama," Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, and dozens more — the "Muscle Shoals Sound." Hall's famous rhythm section (the Swampers — Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, Jimmy Johnson) broke off in 1969 to open their own room at 3614 Jackson Highway in Sheffield, where they recorded the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" (December 1969, three days of sessions captured on tape and film), plus Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album, Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," Paul Simon, the Staple Singers, Cher, and Bob Dylan. Both studios are open for public tours and still actively record. Helen Keller's birthplace Ivy Green is six miles east in Tuscumbia — Keller was born June 27, 1880 in a small white cottage on the family property; the pump where Anne Sullivan first communicated the word "water" to seven-year-old deaf-blind Helen by spelling it into her hand is still there.
A two-room shotgun shack in East Tupelo, built by Vernon Presley in 1934 with $180 borrowed from his employer. Elvis Aaron Presley was born here January 8, 1935 — his identical twin Jessie Garon was stillborn. The Presley family lost the house to the bank when Elvis was two; they moved around Mississippi for the next eleven years before leaving for Memphis in 1948. The house was bought by the city of Tupelo in 1957 with proceeds from a benefit concert Elvis performed for the local youth. The 15-acre Elvis Presley Park surrounding the house includes the original Assembly of God church where Elvis was first exposed to gospel music (moved here from its original site), an "Elvis at 13" bronze statue, and a museum tracing his early years in the Shake Rag community. More than 100,000 visitors a year. Designated a Mississippi historic landmark; part of the official Mississippi Blues Trail.