The pandemic may have stalled my nomadic life, but it did deliver one gift… I had time to watch the sweetest home renovation show, Home Town.

The lovely couple, who started to rebuild their down-on-its-luck home town, sparked a revolution that has gone far beyond their city limits.

Having watched every episode, I had to visit and see it for myself. The added bonus was that it was a stop on Amtrak’s Crescent route between Atlanta and New Orleans, my last & next destinations. The train goes through once a day, thankfully at a decent hour, and it meant that I had exactly 48 hours on the ground to see as much as possible of this petite Southern city. I was further aided in this endeavour by the gift of a golf cart for the duration to pootle around and get to see way more than walking could accomplish.

Laurel* is the second county seat of Jones County, aka The Free State of Jones°, which was created when disillusioned Southerners, who travelled here after the fall of Vicksburg, seceded from the Confederacy during the Civil War.

The railway came through in 1881 and, within a year, Laurel was incorporated and the timber industry took off, thanks to its location in the “piney woods ecoregion of the southeastern United States” and the superabundance of yellow pine forests. The industry created a boom-town and, by 1918, Laurel’s sawmills “produced and shipped more yellow pine lumber than those of any other location in the world.”

The wealthy ‘timber families’ – namely Eastman, Gardiner and Rogers – are responsible for Laurel’s famed Central Historic District, considered “Mississippi's largest, finest and most intact collection of early-20th-century architecture” listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, inside many of those buildings, many an antique, vintage and gift shop resides. So much so that it appears Laurel has morphed from lumber boom-town to an interior decorators’ dream destination.

While I only stayed for two days, I could easily have lingered longer and slowed down to enjoy the pace of life and sample more of what was on offer in this City Beautiful. I’ll be back!

*The name comes from the thickets of mountain laurel that covered the original town site.

°Immortalised in the eponymous movie starring Matthew McConaughey.

Experience

Consume

Purchase

Rest

This guide details all of the things The Packed Bag experienced. Please see Visit Laurel & Jones County for more.