Early Long Beach

Before it was a beach town, Long Beach was a radish town. When the virgin yellow pine was cut out, farmers planted row crops on the cleared land, and the Long Red radish, a beer-hall favorite in the northern states, made the place proud enough to call itself the Radish Capital of the World. In 1921 a bumper crop filled more than three hundred trainloads bound north. The town incorporated on August 10, 1905. Later the common button radish pushed the Long Red aside, and the farms gave way to the beach and tourism.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ship Island and Fort Massachusetts — 14 mi
  A barrier island twelve miles off the Mississippi coast with a brick fort burned half-built in 1861, a Union prison camp, and the garrison post of the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard.
• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 14 mi
  The beachfront parking lot beside the Biloxi Lighthouse where state markers recall the 1959 and 1960 wade-ins that opened Mississippi's public beaches to Black residents.
• Biloxi Lighthouse — 14 mi
  A cast-iron tower lit in 1848 on the Biloxi beachfront, kept by women for most of its first century and still in service after Camille and Katrina.
• Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art — 16 mi
  Frank Gehry's pavilions on the Biloxi waterfront, built around the pottery of George Ohr, the self-styled Mad Potter, and the rebuilt Pleasant Reed House.

More markers nearby

• Dr. Felix Henry Dunn — 2.1 mi
• Boggsdale — 2.4 mi
• 1863 East Pascagoula Raid — 2.7 mi
• Gulfport-Harrison County Library — 2.9 mi