Eric Clark Coastal Preserve

Eric Clark was Mississippi's Secretary of State from 1996 to 2008, which made him trustee of the Gulf Coast public trust tidelands and steward of more than 1.3 million acres of state land, including school-trust sixteenth-section land. He led the state's acquisition of 16,000 acres of endangered coastal wetlands for permanent public use, a total that included Deer Island and a 900-acre tract in Gautier. The Legislature named that tract for him in April 2023, and it was dedicated that October. Seven walking trails, about 2.5 miles in all, run through it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge — 2.8 mi
  A refuge for one of the rarest birds in North America and the wet pine savanna it needs, created in 1975 as the first refuge established under the Endangered Species Act.
• LaPointe-Krebs House (Old Spanish Fort) — 6.1 mi
  The oldest standing structure in Mississippi, a French colonial plantation house in Pascagoula, set on land where Pascagoula and Biloxi peoples lived before the colonists came.
• Round Island Lighthouse at Lighthouse Park — 6.3 mi
  What survives of the 1832 Round Island light, moved to the foot of the Pascagoula River bridge, with a free walking pathway through nine eras of Pascagoula history.
• Walter Anderson Museum of Art — 10 mi
  A museum in downtown Ocean Springs built around the artist who rowed to Horn Island to paint, with his 1952 murals of Iberville's 1699 landing and the Seven Climates of the town.

More markers nearby

• Graveline — 2.9 mi
• Gautier School — 2.9 mi
• The Old Place — 3.2 mi
• Pascagoula Street Railroad and Power Company — 6.6 mi