Biloxi, Harrison County, Mississippi
An 1848 lighthouse stranded in the median of the beach highway, a shrimp fleet that still goes out from Point Cadet, eight casino resorts built where the barges used to float, and a national-seashore island twelve miles offshore where the water finally turns clear. Here is how to plan a trip around what is actually here.
Today
Wind matters more than surf here. The Mississippi Sound is shallow and short-fetched, so a stiff southerly makes it choppy and muddy while a calm morning turns it to glass. From June to September the storm builds inland late morning and comes back over the coast in the afternoon, which is why the boats go early.
84°
Sunny · feels like 93°
TodayHigh 85° · Low 80°
Near-perfect conditions for dolphin cruises and beach time — a passing shower is possible.
Sunrise 6:43 AMSunset 6:53 PM
Updated
Full forecast and tidesEarly morning, 7 AM – 1 PM
Near-perfect conditions for dolphin cruises and beach time — a passing shower is possible.
Outdoor comfort89 out of 100 · Excellent
Sweet spot around 7 AM at 80°F.
Updated
BoatingFair
Seas near 0.3 ft and 16 mph of wind — fine offshore in a big hull, unpleasant in a small one.
SwimmingExcellent
Water at 88°F with 0.3 ft of surf — warm, and calm enough for children.
FishingGood
Seas 0.3 ft with 16 mph of wind. Comfortable nearshore, workable offshore.
Updated
Places
A cast-iron lighthouse marooned between four lanes of traffic. A Frank Gehry campus built for a potter who called himself mad. A schooner pier at the end of the peninsula where the fleet still works. An island fort you can only reach by boat. Start here and Biloxi stops being confusing.
Landmark
An 1848 cast-iron tower marooned in the median of a four-lane highway, kept for sixty-three years by one family of women.
0.5–1 hoursFree to see and photograph from the street or the beach. Climbing the tower carries a small fee when climbs are running.
Park
A barrier island twelve miles offshore with clear Gulf water, a brick fort, and an anchorage that shaped three centuries here.
4–7 hoursThe island itself carries no entrance fee. Getting there does — the ferry is a ticketed service, and a private charter costs considerably more.
Museum
Frank Gehry's metal pods set among live oaks, built to hold the twisted, paper-thin pottery of a man who called himself mad.
1.5–2.5 hoursA modest admission charge for adults with reduced rates for students, seniors and children. Walking the grounds between the buildings costs nothing.
Museum
Canneries, schooners, net-making and the Vietnamese shrimp fleet: the museum that explains why Biloxi is here at all.
1.5–2.5 hoursA modest admission charge for adults, with lower rates for children, students and seniors. Schooner sailings are priced separately.
Entertainment
The resort that brought Las Vegas building to Mississippi in 1999, and reopened exactly one year after Katrina closed it.
1–5 hoursNo admission charge to enter the resort or walk the public areas. Rooms, dining, the spa and theatre tickets are all priced separately.
Historic site
The beachfront house where Jefferson Davis spent his last twelve years, now a museum, a cemetery and a privately run presidential library.
1.5–2.5 hoursPaid admission. House tours and the library have been ticketed separately as well as together.
Neighbourhood
The headland where the canneries stood for a century and where Mississippi's coastal casino era began in 1992.
1–3 hoursFree to walk. The museum and the schooner sailings are ticketed separately.
Historic site
A monument on the Town Green carrying the names of people who died in this city on 29 August 2005.
15–30 minutesFree. There is no ticket and no attendant.
Index
Twenty-one ways into this coast. The casino pages and the seafood pages run deepest because they are the two industries that built the city, and the island pages matter most because the water people came for is not the water in front of their hotel.
Start here
What we tell somebody with four days and a rental car. The island comes first because it is the only clear Gulf water in reach and the ferry only runs half the year. After that it splits cleanly: one day on the peninsula, one day on the history, one evening the casinos are genuinely good at.
Things to do
Almost everyone who books this coast arrives with a picture in their head of clear green water, and almost everyone finds something else. The sand…
6 places
Things to do
The law came first, and the architecture is downstream of it. Mississippi legalised dockside gaming in 1990, and the statute carried one condition…
6 places
Things to do
The casinos are what people search for and the seafood is what actually made this city. In 1881 the first cannery opened on the water here, and…
6 places
Things to do
Twenty-six miles of white sand run along the Harrison County shoreline, unbroken from Biloxi through Gulfport and on towards Pass Christian, and…
6 places
Things to do
For a city of fewer than fifty thousand people, Biloxi carries an improbable number of separate histories, and they do not blend. The French landed…
7 places
Who it suits
Bringing children to a casino city sounds like a category error and it is not, but it does require knowing three things that nobody tells you at…
6 places
Budget
Most coastal towns charge you for the privilege of arriving. A beach parking permit, a per-hour lot, a chair-and-umbrella concession that owns the…
7 places
Who it suits
The advertised version of a romantic weekend here involves a suite with a Sound view, a tasting menu and a spa. You can have all of that, and a…
6 places
Who it suits
Eight casino resorts operate inside the Biloxi city limits, which for a city of fewer than fifty thousand people is an extraordinary concentration…
6 places
Things to do
A national seashore usually means a car park, a visitor centre and a path to the sand. The Mississippi district of Gulf Islands National Seashore is…
6 places
Things to do
Biloxi sits in the middle of a coast that runs in a straight line, which makes it an unusually good base. Interstate 10 runs east and west a few…
6 places
Things to do
Most visitors ask for a deep-sea charter and most visitors would have a better day if they did not. That is the single most useful sentence on this…
6 places
Book it
Be warned: the bookable inventory in this market is tiny. Eight products, most of them under fifty dollars, and no amount of scrolling will produce more. What exists is worth doing — a shrimping demonstration that pulls the net up in front of you, a schooner sail, a charter out of the Back Bay — and the rest of this site tells you what to do with the other three days.
Some links below go to Viator, our booking partner. We earn a commission on bookings made through them — at no extra cost to you, and with no influence on what we recommend.
Why we chose it
The shrimping demonstration is the one to book if you book only one thing. It is short enough to survive a marginal forecast, cheap enough not to matter if the catch is dull, and it shows you the industry that named this city using the actual method rather than a display case. Ask what came up on the previous run before you choose your departure.
Top Product
Hard Rock Cafe Biloxi (opens in a new tab)
Enjoy a prix-fixe menu at the Biloxi Hard Rock Cafe. Classic American cooking comes to the heart of The Playground of the South, where…
2 hours
Prices checked
Why we chose it
Seventy minutes is the right length for a seven-year-old and a net full of live blue crab and small flounder is a better aquarium than most aquariums. Look for a departure in the first half of the morning, before the heat and before the afternoon storms build inland, and confirm whether under-threes travel free with an adult.
Carnival
The Private Biloxi to New Orleans Grand Tour (opens in a new tab)
As you arrive in New Orleans, you'll be embraced by the soulful sounds of jazz, the aroma of delectable Creole cuisine, and the spirit of…
Full day
Prices checked
Two ways to do this
Shared trips are the cheaper ticket for one or two people. Once you are a party of four or more, a private charter is often close to the same money per head and runs to your schedule rather than the operator's. Both are listed here so you can do the arithmetic.
Best value for a group
Scavenger Hunts
Our very unique, immersive adventures are the only ones of their kind. We, unlike other companies, provide your very own remote…
2 hours
Prices checked
Private — just your party
Agent Low Quality Product
⭐ Top-Rated Vacation Photoshoots 2025 We’re not just photographers, we’re storytellers capturing your holiday exactly as it feels. With…
1 hour
Prices checked
News
When the Ship Island boat starts and stops for the season, water-contact advisories on the mainland beach, storm and evacuation notices from June to November, casino and museum reopenings, and what Cruisin' the Coast week does to the beach road. Short items, checked before we post them.
Festival
Published 2026 dates are 7 and 8 November. The largest arts festival on the Mississippi coast closes the streets of Ocean Springs for a weekend.
November 7 – November 8
Festival
Published dates for 2026 are 4 to 11 October. Rooms across the whole coast sell out months in advance and rates roughly double.
October 4 – October 11
Travel alert
Surge, not wind speed, is what this coast plans around. A refundable rate in September is worth the difference it costs.
Beach update
Runoff after heavy rain raises bacteria levels in the Sound. Advisories are posted by segment and are not visible from the sand.
Last updated . We date every item so you can tell how old the information is.
This season
The ferry sailing from mid-March to the end of October, Carnival parades that have rolled since 1908, ten thousand classic cars on the beach road in early October, hurricane season peaking in September, and the cheap clear weeks in November that locals keep to themselves.
Two seasons wearing one label, and the split is sharp. September is when the season peaks statistically on this coast, and it is the month this city measures its own history against; rates soften, the crowds thin, and the risk is real rather than theoretical.
October is the opposite. The Sound holds the high seventies, the humidity finally breaks, the ferry runs to the end of the month, and Cruisin' the Coast puts something in the order of ten thousand classic cars on thirty miles of US 90 for a week. Published dates for 2026 are 4 to 11 October. Rooms from Bay St Louis to Pascagoula sell out months ahead and rates roughly double, so that week is either the reason you came or the week to avoid.
November is the quiet reward: dry, clear, high sixties and low seventies, no ferry, no crowds, and the best month of the year for the bridge path and the Back Bay.
Things to do
Biloxi sits in the middle of a coast that runs in a straight line, which makes it an unusually good base. Interstate 10 runs east and west a few…
Plan your trip
The mistake people make here is not choosing the wrong way to travel. It is assuming that because everything sits on one road, everything is close…
Things to do
The casinos are what people search for and the seafood is what actually made this city. In 1881 the first cannery opened on the water here, and…
Who it suits
The advertised version of a romantic weekend here involves a suite with a Sound view, a tasting menu and a spa. You can have all of that, and a…
Budget
Most coastal towns charge you for the privilege of arriving. A beach parking permit, a per-hour lot, a chair-and-umbrella concession that owns the…
Who you are with
This is an unusually cheap coast for anyone willing to walk: free beach, free bridge path, free lighthouse views, free parking at most casino garages. It is also a city with a 21-and-over gaming floor in the middle of it, so the family trip and the adult weekend need different maps.
With children
Who it suits
Bringing children to a casino city sounds like a category error and it is not, but it does require knowing three things that nobody tells you at…
Two of you
Who it suits
The advertised version of a romantic weekend here involves a suite with a Sound view, a tasting menu and a spa. You can have all of that, and a…
Adults only
Who it suits
Eight casino resorts operate inside the Biloxi city limits, which for a city of fewer than fifty thousand people is an extraordinary concentration…
Spending nothing
Budget
Most coastal towns charge you for the privilege of arriving. A beach parking permit, a per-hour lot, a chair-and-umbrella concession that owns the…
Where things are
Where the ferry actually leaves from, how far Point Cadet really is from the casino strip, which side of the bay Ocean Springs is on, and where Ship Island sits relative to all of it. The map answers the questions this coast's geography keeps raising.
Every place shown on this map is also listed below as a link, grouped by area.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Guides
How to plan a day on Ship Island without wasting the sailing, what a casino weekend here actually costs, how to eat Gulf shrimp and know it is Gulf shrimp, and how to visit a coast that lost its waterfront in 2005 without either ignoring it or gawping at it.
Guide
Six museums, an 1848 lighthouse in the middle of a highway, and one site whose interpretation is contested. What each one is, and which to give your afternoon to.
10 min readAdeline Boudreaux
Guide
Almost everything a visitor sees on the Biloxi waterfront is younger than 2006. This is why, told with the dates, the numbers and the things that were not rebuilt.
9 min readAdeline Boudreaux
Guide
A cannery town that became a casino town without ever stopping trawling. What is genuinely local, what is in season, and the question to ask before you order shrimp.
9 min readRhett Vuong
Guide
Twelve miles offshore, an hour on the boat, a brick fort standing in clear Gulf water, and almost no shade on the entire island. Plan it as an expedition.
9 min readRhett Vuong
Guide
Most people arrive expecting a beach town and find a working port with eight casinos, a shrimp fleet and a waterfront rebuilt after 2005. Here is how to read the place.
9 min readCorinne Ladner
Guide
The answer turns on one question: do you need to be on the water? If yes, your year is mid-March to October. If not, January is the best value on the Gulf.
8 min readCorinne Ladner
Last updated . Guides are revisited when prices, hours or access change.
About us
We say which city a thing is actually in, when a boat only runs half the year, when the water is unsafe to swim in, and when we have not been able to confirm a price or an opening time. We write about Katrina factually and about contested history plainly. Where a booking earns us a commission, the link says so.
We are a small editorial team that covers Biloxi and nowhere else on this site. Everything here — the descriptions, the comparisons, the reasons one boat suits a family of six better than another — is written by us. Nothing on this page is an operator’s marketing copy reprinted as if it were ours.
We name what costs money and roughly how much, we say when a car park fills by mid-morning, and we say when a boat only runs between April and October. Where we have not been able to confirm a price or an opening time ourselves, we say that too rather than guessing — hours and fees change seasonally, so check before you travel.
Our news items are assembled from verified sources and are labelled where they were machine drafted; every one is checked against the source before it is published. Our editorial standards page sets out the whole method, including how we correct an error once we know about it.
Last updated — the date an editor last went through this page end to end.
