Ellisville, MS

Jones College and Howard Technology Park give Ellisville a present-day working map. The college occupies a 390-acre campus just off Interstate 59, with workforce programs and a library serving an eight-county district. The technology park places a 150,000-square-foot Howard Computers manufacturing plant beside the Jones College Advanced Technology Center, with access to road, rail, and the regional airport. The Ellisville Public Library, part of the Laurel-Jones County Library System since 1988, adds a civic resource on North Court Street. Those institutions sit in the first county seat of Jones County, where the Jones County Courthouse and much of the county government remain.

Named for former Mississippi senator Powhatan Ellis, the town became Jones County's commercial center in the early nineteenth century. Laurel later developed as the second county seat and the larger lumber-and-textile center; the Mississippi Department of Archives and History notes that the two courthouses share the same original design. The 2020 census counted 4,652 residents. Ellisville is eight miles southwest of Laurel and 22 miles northeast of Hattiesburg, within the Laurel micropolitan area.