Magnolia, MS

Magnolia is Pike County's seat in southwest Mississippi, founded in 1856 by Ansel H. Prewett and set at the meeting of the Minnehaha and Little Tangipahoa rivers. The county-seat role gives it more courthouse weight than its size might suggest, while South Pike schools and a public library fill in the everyday map. The name sounds floral, but the local geography is all water, cotton-country history, and roads radiating toward McComb and the Louisiana line. Magnolia is southwest Mississippi in a county-seat-and-river-confluence shape.