The Singing River
Pascagoula sits at the mouth of the Pascagoula River, which The Nature Conservancy calls the largest undammed river in the contiguous 48 states. Local press puts it plainly: no dams, no locks, no levees. Its nickname is the Singing River, from a legend that the peaceful Pascagoula people sang as they walked hand in hand into the water rather than fight the invading Biloxi tribe.
The watershed is about as wild as Southern rivers get now. The Conservancy counts 327 bird species breeding among its cypress and tupelo swamps, oxbow lakes and pine ridges. A push in the 1970s, which E.O. Wilson called a grassroots epic, put 35,000 acres under public protection, and almost 70,000 acres of public and private conservation land now buffer the river corridor.
The city took its present shape in 1910. The village of Pascagoula, incorporated in 1838, merged with Scranton, a settlement that had grown up around a railroad station, and the two became the City of Pascagoula. Downtown's Scranton Historic District joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
The Flagship City
Ingalls Shipbuilding has built ships here for more than 85 years. It employs more than 11,000 people, calls itself the largest manufacturing employer in Mississippi, and builds amphibious ships, destroyers and cutters for the U.S. Navy. The heritage area notes that Pascagoula's daytime population may run to twice its roughly 21,000 residents.
Even so, the town keeps the feel of a fishing village under its moss covered live oaks. Shipyard shifts and fishing trips share the same calendar here, and each spring Main Street Pascagoula helps put on a free music festival at Beach Park for no bigger reason than to celebrate a river that still runs the way it always has.
