The state of Mississippi is named after the Mississippi River. Though the river was called by many different names, the name Mississippi given to it by the Indians was the name that was used on Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle's map of the area in 1695.

Mississippi means "large river" to the Chippewa Indians.

Welcome to Mississippi. Here, the character of the Old South can still be felt with the scents of the magnolia blossom floating on the warm, moist breeze. Stately antebellum mansions are preserved across the state, hosted by women in billowing hoop skirts during the spring and summer months. Mississippi is a state that is proud of its history and works hard to preserve the memory of the Old South.

When Mississippi was a one-crop state before the arrival of the boll weevil in 1907, plantations thrived, and cotton was king in the fertile soil of the Yazoo-Mississippi delta. Today, though Mississippi ranks among the leading producers, cotton competes with other crops, like soybeans, and manufacturing has replaced agriculture as the economic leader. Mississippi is the nation's largest producer of upholstered furniture.

Mississippi has not experienced the urban growth of other states and is still very much a land of small towns scattered among rolling farmlands and forested hills. About 40% of of Mississippi is occupied by about 42,000 farms.