Gulf Coast Military Academy

Colonel James Chappel Hardy founded the boys' preparatory school in 1912. Early in the 1950s the senior division closed and the federal government bought the grounds, which became an Air Force training annex of Keesler and, from 1973, a Navy retirement home that later joined the Armed Forces Retirement Home. The junior school ran until 1976, when its owner sold the property to William Carey College. The biologist E. O. Wilson is among its alumni. Katrina wrecked the campus in 2005, and the salvaged cornerstone of the old office complex went to a military museum at Camp Shelby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 6.9 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 — 6.9 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 — 8.6 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.
• Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum — 9.4 mi
  A Point Cadet museum on Biloxi's oyster, shrimp and schooner past, from the packing houses and the shrimpers' unions to the Vietnamese families who rebuilt the industry.

More markers nearby

• Mississippi City Colored School — 1.0 mi
• Mississippi City Courthouse — 1.7 mi
• Mississippi City Cemetery — 2.2 mi
• Centennial Plaza — 2.2 mi