Here dozens of guitars, historic artifacts, and a small recording studio bring the blues to life in all its tormented and anguished glory. Two nongaming benefits of all this investment are the RiverPark, where a 4-mi (6.5-km) hiking trail winds through Mississippi wetlands, giving grand views over the river, and the renovated train depot, which holds the small but scintillating Gateway to the Blues Museum ($10) on US-61. To aid the influx of people anxious to part with their money, US-61 has been turned into a high-volume four-lane highway, and motels, fast-food places, and gas stations have popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain. As ever, outsiders have benefited much more than the still-poor local residents. Several billion dollars of investment later, every big name in the casino business lines the levee here. Tunica County, long one of the most destitute places in the country, only became a gold mine after the state legalized gambling in 1992. Outfitted with cannons, pigs, war dogs, and 1,000 soldiers, de Soto spent years marching through Southern swamps in quest of gold-but he was 450 years too early.

Leaving Memphis via US-61, the GRR enters DeSoto and Tunica Counties the place-names memorialize Hernando de Soto, the first European to see the Mississippi, and the combative Tunica people, who forced the Spanish conquistador’s mosquito- and snake-bitten expedition to flee across the river hereabouts in 1542.

Tunica, MS: Casino Country The Tunica Queen riverboat at the RiverPark.

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