US-80, which for much of the way has been replaced by the I-20 freeway, cuts across the middle of Mississippi, passing through its three largest cities—Meridian, Jackson, and Vicksburg—whose small sizes show how rural and diffuse the state still is. Only Jackson, the capital and by far the biggest city in the state, is anything like an urban center, with a couple of “skyscrapers” and nearly 200,000 people. Mostly what you see along this stretch is small farms and Civil War battlefields, the most extensive and important of which rises above the Mississippi River in Vicksburg.
The Mississippi River town of Vicksburg marks the junction with our Great River Road route.
