Jackson County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Jackson County

Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula is the largest US Navy combat-ship builder by hull tonnage delivered — the yard is the sole builder of the Navy's Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers and one of two yards (with Bath Iron Works) building the Zumwalt class, and the only Gulf Coast yard authorized for Aegis Combat System integration per Navy NAVSEA contracting. The yard's economic footprint anchors a 22,392-population company town that drives most of Jackson County's working-age employment. The Mississippi segment of Gulf Islands National Seashore covers Horn, Petit Bois, and East Ship islands offshore — barrier islands accessible only by boat or seasonal NPS-contracted ferry from Gulfport, with no developed campgrounds but permitted primitive beach camping under NPS permit (group size capped at 8, no fires above the high-tide line, all waste packed out per the GUIS Foundation Document).

Horn Island is the most isolated and the only one with potable groundwater on long-term island record per USGS sampling. Ocean Springs (population 17,442) anchors the cultural-arts economy: the Walter Anderson Museum holds the largest collection of Walter Inglis Anderson's Gulf Coast nature paintings — Anderson rowed solo to Horn Island in a wooden skiff repeatedly from the 1940s through his death in 1965 to paint marine life from a tent camp. Davis Bayou Campground at the GUIS mainland headquarters in Ocean Springs accepts rigs to 35 ft with electric hookups across 51 sites on year-round reservation through recreation.gov. The US-90 Gulf Coast scenic corridor crosses the county on a reconstructed post-Katrina causeway; the original 1929 alignment was destroyed by the 2005 storm surge.