Mississippi Seal

Mississippi Geography and Economy

Area 125,434 km²
Residents 2,988,726
Residents per km² 23.8
Capital Jackson
Postal Code MS
ISO-3166-2 code US MS
FIPS code 29

Mississippi is a state in the United States of America. It is one of the southern states and has almost three million residents on an area of ​​125,443 km². The capital of Mississippi is Jackson. The state takes its name from the Mississippi River, which is the Indian word for “great river”. The nickname Mississippi is ” Magnolia State ” – magnolia state.

Magnolia - one of the symbols of the state of Mississippi

Mississippi is east of the river of the same name on its lower reaches. The area is mostly flat with a few low elevations in the extreme northeast. In the south the state has a narrow coast to the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi is bordered by the US state of Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, and Arkansas and Louisiana are on the western side of the Mississippi River.

Abbreviated as MS by AbbreviationFinder, Mississippi can be classified in the subtropical zone, with mild winters and very warm summers. In summer the amount of precipitation is greater than in winter. In winter (9 ° C to 18 ° C) it is too warm for permanent snow.

Economy

Mississippi is at the bottom of the US economy. The real gross domestic product per capita (GDP) in 2016 was 36,029 dollars (national average of the 50 US states: 57,118 dollars; national ranking: 50).

Important branches of the economy are the cultivation of cotton, corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, oil and gas production, the timber industry, the furniture industry, the food industry, the paper industry, cattle breeding and the computer industry.

Mississippi was the third state in the United States to re-allow gambling in the 20th century. Since 1990, the USA’s second largest gambling industry, after Nevada, has been developing, concentrated in Biloxi, but now extending along the entire Gulf coast. In 1997, around 30,000 employees in 29 casinos served 33,876 slot machines and 1,370 table games. Mississippi can look back on a long experience with illegal gambling: the so-called Dixie Mafia had been operating large and prosperous casinos since the 1960s, and the extent of illegal gambling in Biloxi exceeded that in Atlantic City. Gambling on ships has been legal since 1990. The ships must be moored to a quay and swim automatically, but real seaworthiness is not necessary. The ships are even forbidden

In 1966 Mississippi became the last state in the USA to abolish prohibition.

Mississippi River

The Mississippi River is a 3778 kilometer long river in the United States. It rises from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and flows into the Gulf of Mexico around 160 kilometers south of New Orleans.

Its longest tributary, the Missouri, is significantly longer to its mouth, but at this point it is also significantly poorer than the Mississippi. The Missouri River and the lower reaches of the Mississippi form the Mississippi-Missouri with 6051 kilometers in length, the fourth longest river system on earth.

The largest tributary of the Mississippi in terms of water volume, the Ohio River, clearly exceeds the main river at its mouth. At this point the Missouri and Illinois Rivers have already flowed into the main stream.

On its way, the Mississippi crosses almost the entire state territory of the USA from north to south and flows through eight US states: Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and forms the border of Wisconsin and Iowa. At St. Louis it unites with the Missouri and the Meramec and at Cairo, Illinois, with the Ohio. Except for the area around the Great Lakesthe river drains the entire area between the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Appalachians in the east. The Mississippi Delta near New Orleans forms one of the largest estuaries in the world.

The Mississippi can generally be divided into its upper course ( Upper Mississippi River ), from its source to the confluence of the Ohio, and in its lower course ( Lower Mississippi River ), from the Ohio to its confluence with the Gulf of Mexico.

The name Mississippi probably comes from the language of the Algonquin Indians. It is made up of the words messe for large and sepe for water. The frequently encountered translation “father of the waters” is more of a poetic than literal translation. Another possible origin would be from the language of the Anishinabe Messipi for “big river”. Colloquially, the Mississippi is often called “Old Man River” in the USA, immortalized above all in the song Ol ‘Man River from the 1927 musical Show Boat.

In the spring of 1927, the river caused the largest flood disaster to date in the United States, when around 70,000 km² of land in the lower reaches were flooded up to 9 meters high and 700,000 people had to be evacuated. This was one of the factors that promoted the Great Migration of African Americans between 1915 and 1930. Another flood of the century occurred in 1993, when approximately 80,000 km² of land was inundated. The strongest floods since 1927 occurred after the annual snow melt and then continued heavy rainfall from mid-April 2011 during the flood in May 2011.

Mississippi Flag

The flag of the US state of Mississippi was introduced on February 7, 1894. The current flag combines the flag of the former West Florida, whose territory Mississippi belonged to from 1803 to 1817, with the war flag of the Confederate States of America, with the upper red stripe replaced with a blue one.

Mississippi is the only state in the United States that still has the Confederate flag in its flag. Georgia abolished the Confederate War Flag in 2001. Arkansas and Tennessee only hint at the Confederate flag.

Referendum to change the flag

A referendum was held on April 17, 2001 to change the flag. As an alternative, a flag was presented that would have replaced the part with the Confederate flag with a blue square with a ring of 13 gold stars (similar to the EU flag) in an outer circle and 7 stars inside. The 13 stars were supposed to represent the original 13 American colonies at the time of independence in 1776. The six stars should represent the “Six Indian Nations”. The larger star in the center of the circle should represent the state of Mississippi itself. The 20 stars in total should point to Mississippi as the twentieth state in the United States.

The old flag was confirmed with a vote of 64% to 36%. This voting result also roughly reflected the ratio between white and Afro-American residents of Mississippi.

Also known as Magnolia State, Mississippi is short for MS with a population of 2,844,658. According to Countryaah, the capital city and the biggest city of Mississippi is Jackson.

Mississippi Seal