The Memphis skyline along the Mississippi River — the downtown towers standing on the bluff above the brown water, with the arched bridge crossing to Arkansas beyond.

Everything here starts with the water

Memphis is not a city with a river. It is a city because of one.

The bluff is the only high ground on the lower Mississippi that does not flood. That one fact produced the landing, the landing produced the cotton money, the money drew the people, the people made three kinds of music, and the same city became where the sanitation strike and Dr King’s assassination happened. Read as a chain, Memphis stops being a list of unrelated attractions.

Hero photograph by Quintin Soloviev, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

The chain

One thing caused the next

Navy is the geography and the trade it created; red is what people made out of it. Each link is a section of this site.

The Mississippi River at Memphis seen from the bank on the bluffThe bluff
The fourth Chickasaw Bluff is the only high ground on the lower Mississippi that does not flood, which is the entire reason a city is here rather than somewhere else.
so →
Main Street at Union Avenue in downtown MemphisThe port
High ground beside deep water makes a landing. The wharf and the cobblestones are the oldest working part of the city.
so →
Downtown Memphis from above, the towers the trade paid forThe cotton
The landing made Memphis the market for the Delta’s cotton, and the Cotton Exchange set prices for a region. The wealth — and the labour it was built on — are both part of the record here.
so →
A corner building on Beale Street in the historic districtThe people
The trade drew the Delta’s population into the city, and Beale Street became the commercial and cultural centre of Black Memphis.
so →
A vintage microphone and standing bass in the Sun Studio roomThe music
Three separate traditions came out of that concentration within fifty years: the blues on Beale, rock and roll at Sun, soul at Stax. They are not one story.
so →
The National Civil Rights Museum at the former Lorraine MotelThe record
The same city was where the sanitation workers’ strike took place and where Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. The National Civil Rights Museum is built around the room at the former Lorraine Motel.
and still →
The terminal building at Memphis International AirportThe freight
The logic never changed: the middle of the country still meets its river here, which is why one of the world’s busiest cargo airports is in Tennessee.

Why a Memphis guide has to start here

Almost every guide to this city opens with the music, then has to explain the cotton, the Delta and the river as background to it. That is the wrong way round. The river is not context for the music — the music is a consequence of the river, and so is the freight hub at the airport, and so is why the famous places are strung along a corridor instead of clustered in a centre. Start at the water and the rest of the city explains itself.

Everything, by subject

Where things live

The courthouse square at Oxford, Mississippi, south of MemphisDay TripsThe Delta, Clarksdale, Shiloh, Oxford.Beale Street in the evening, neon and shopfronts along the blockFood & DrinkBarbecue, the dry rub, and what else.A Main Street trolley car standing at a stop in downtown MemphisGetting AroundA scattered city, and what the trolley does not reach.The Memphis Pyramid beside the river, its glass sides reflectingItineraries & Day PlansSensible orders for one to three days.Beale Street at dusk, its neon signs lit along the blockLandmarks & SightsWhat was built, when, and what for.A modern apartment block on a downtown Memphis streetLiving in MemphisThe city from the resident’s side.The lit marquee of the Stax Museum of American Soul MusicMuseums & GalleriesWhat each collection holds, and where it sits.The Cooper-Young railroad trestle crossing the street below itNeighbourhoodsDowntown, Midtown, and the ten miles between.The Mississippi at Memphis with the bridge and the green bankParks & RiverfrontThe river, the bluff and the green.An art-deco tower in downtown Memphis against a clear skyPlanning & PracticalitiesThe heat, the seasons, the festivals.

The standing rules

What we can tell you, and what we will not

The third column is the unusual one. Everything in it moves faster than a page can, so we send you to whoever actually knows.

Subject
What we can tell you
What we will not
Getting around
The famous places are ten miles apart; a car or rides make it work
Whether a specific route runs today — check the operator
The trolley
A real streetcar on Main Street, and a short one
Whether it is running — it has been suspended before
The seasons
Long humid summers, mild winters, a real severe-weather season
The forecast, and any watch or warning in effect
Barbecue
Pork shoulder and ribs, dry rub as well as wet — both are local
Which places are open, and what any one of them is like
The river
The reason the city exists, and still a working port
River levels and whether the riverfront is closed — it floods
Payment
Card is near-universal; Tennessee’s alcohol rules are their own thing
What a specific venue does — we will not guess

Recently

Newest writing

Where this site stops

We explain what Memphis contains and how it works. We are not a travel agency, we have not been to these places, and we will not pretend otherwise.

  • No invented places, and no invented detail about real onesWe will not name a restaurant we are not certain exists, and we will never describe what being somewhere is like. That is the line the whole genre crosses.
  • The civil-rights history is a record, not an attractionWe write those places as what they are and attribute to the museum, the National Park Service or the Tennessee Historical Commission. We do not dramatise them and we do not paraphrase speeches.
  • No figures without a source and a yearMemphis gets written about badly with stale statistics. Where we give a number on housing, poverty or schools, we say where it came from and when — or we describe the shape of the thing and give no number at all.
  • No fares, prices or opening times as factThey change constantly. We explain the shape of a system and send you to the operator.

About what you read here. Everything on Access Memphis is general information and our own editorial opinion. We research carefully and we say when the evidence is unclear, but we can be wrong, things change, and no article can know your particular situation. Please do your own research and make your own judgement rather than treating anything here as the final word. Prices, products and specifications around the topics we cover change constantly, and what suits one person will not suit another. Check current details yourself, and where a decision involves real money, safety or something you cannot undo, it is worth confirming with a qualified professional before you act.