Pearlington, MS

Pearlington sits along U.S. 90 at the Pearl River, right where Hancock County meets Louisiana. The river has long been the main geographic fact of the place. In the steamboat era, vessels called at Pearlington as they moved between the Gulf and inland Mississippi communities, and the lower Pearl supported logging, shipping, fishing, and other river work. That history still helps make sense of a community whose roads and daily routines follow the water toward the coast and the state line.

NASA's Stennis Space Center changed the surrounding map in 1961, when the federal government acquired Pearlington in part for the large buffer zone around a rocket-testing facility. Several older communities along the East Pearl River were relocated, and the area became a meeting point for space research, ocean work, and Hancock County life. Hurricane Katrina made landfall just south of Pearlington in 2005, adding storm recovery to the community's long relationship with water. Pearl River Community College serves the county's broader education network, while U.S. 90 keeps Pearlington tied to Gulfport, New Orleans, and the smaller river settlements nearby.