Home»All Photographs»Travel»Mississippi»Gateway to the Blues - Tunica, MS

The Gateway to the Blues on Blues Highway 61 in the Mississippi Delta in Tunica, MS looks like a huge juke joint but is a rustic, 1895 train depot with train tracks in the front of the building. It was moved to this location to serve as a museum, gift shop, and visitor’s center. On the day I was there – a Saturday – they were doing inventory and you could only look at the merchandise from a distance but couldn’t buy t-shirts, pecan rolls, guitar pick jewelry, or other merchandise. You could go in the museum for cash only but I was appropriately cash poor in the Mississippi Delta. I left and returned at sundown to take a photo of the building and meet some of Mississippi’s finest mosquitos. I quickly doused myself with my Deet replacement, Picaridin, and the mosquitos disappeared – not a single mosquito bite.