Our story
About Main Street
Moss Point Main Street is the nonprofit working to revitalize our historic downtown riverfront district, block by block and business by business.
Our mission
Bringing the River City's downtown back to life.
Dedicated to the revitalization and economic enhancement of our town's Downtown Riverfront District.
Our approach is rooted in preserving our community's unique character and promoting sustainable growth, so local businesses thrive and downtown stays a place worth gathering. We do it through a proven four-point method.
Organization
Building the partnerships, volunteers, and support that keep downtown moving.
Design
Caring for the look and feel of Main Street, from the buildings to the riverfront.
Promotion
Bringing people downtown with events, marketing, and a reason to gather.
Economic Restructuring
Strengthening downtown's businesses and filling its historic storefronts.
Home base
We work out of the Jackson County Small Business Incubator.
Our office sits inside the Jackson County Small Business Incubator, in the historic 1875 Cudabac-Gantt House at 4836 Main Street, right in the middle of the district we serve.
Visit usRecognized statewide & nationally
An accredited Main Street community.
An accredited member of Main Street America, within a national network of more than 1,200 communities building vibrant places through preservation-based economic development. We're a designated member of the Mississippi Main Street Association, and one of 19 projects selected for the Mississippi Main Street Revitalization Grant.
Downtown's story
Built by the river, built by timber.
Moss Point grew up where the Escatawpa and Pascagoula rivers meet, and it grew up on timber. At its peak, nine sawmills ran inside the city and twelve more lined the river within a single mile. In 1901 it became a city, the only place in Mississippi to do it without ever having been a town first.
The Main Street those years built is still standing. Burnham's Drugs opened in 1902 and never left. A fire took the whole downtown in 1923, and within two years the city had cleared the ash and built it back. Today the Mississippi Blues Trail marks the same street, where Moss Point Main Street is still at work keeping it alive.