Beale Street in Memphis

11 November 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  11 minutes

© Andreas Faessler/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Andreas Faessler/cc-by-sa-3.0

Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles (2.9 km). It is a significant location in the city’s history, as well as in the history of blues music. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts frequently bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas. Beale Street was created in 1841 by entrepreneur and developer Robertson Topp (1807–1876), who named it for a forgotten military hero. (The original name was Beale Avenue.) Its western end primarily housed shops of trade merchants, who traded goods with ships along the Mississippi River, while the eastern part developed as an affluent suburb. In the 1860s, many black traveling musicians began performing on Beale. The first of these to call Beale Street home were the Young Men’s Brass Band, who were formed by Sam Thomas in 1867.   read more…

Great River Road along the Mississippi River

10 July 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

Great River Road route marker © Thomas R Machnitzk/cc-by-3.0

Great River Road route marker © Thomas R Machnitzk/cc-by-3.0

The Great River Road is a collection of state and local roads that follow the course of the Mississippi River through ten states of the United States. They are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. It formerly extended north into Canada, serving the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba.   read more…

Memphis in Tennessee

23 March 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  14 minutes

© Christopher Boyd Jr/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Christopher Boyd Jr/cc-by-sa-3.0

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers. Memphis had a population of 653,000, making it the second largest city in the state of Tennessee. The greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, has a population of 1.4 million. This makes Memphis the second-largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed by metropolitan Nashville. Memphis is the youngest of Tennessee’s major cities, founded in 1819 as a planned city by a group of wealthy Americans including judge John Overton and future president Andrew Jackson. A resident of Memphis is referred to as a Memphian, and the Memphis region is known, particularly to media outlets, as Memphis and the Mid-South.   read more…

New Orleans in Louisiana

15 December 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  18 minutes

Royal Street © Jan Kronsell/cc-by-sa-3.0

Royal Street © Jan Kronsell/cc-by-sa-3.0

New Orleans (French: La Nouvelle-Orléans) is the major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city is at 392,000. The New Orleans metropolitan area (New Orleans–Metairie–Kenner Metropolitan Statistical Area) has a population of 1.4 million. The city is known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is famous for its cuisine, music (particularly as the birthplace of jazz) and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is often referred to as the “most unique” in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, and occupies both sides of the Mississippi River. The heart of the city and its French Quarter is on the river’s north side. The city and Orleans Parish (French: paroisse d’Orléans) are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of lies within the city limits, lies to the north and Lake Borgne lies to the east.   read more…

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