Lower Mississippi River Museum — Attraction in Vicksburg

Highly recommend this place. It's free, staff friendly and just awesome. This was one our favorite places to visit on our road trip through Vicksburg. The town is not big and can be toured in one or two days. This museum as you walk in shows the visitors a short video of the history of Vicksburg mainly talking about the Mississippi River and how people learned to manage it over the past years. Also. They show how flooding impacted the people living here. They have incredible displays and miniatures of the natives and historic boats. The museum is clean and well maintained with public restrooms. The best part is walking across this bridge to the riverboat. We got to tour inside this huge ship. It has three levels going all the way down to engineering. This showing the huge engines used to power the boat. At the top is the pilot room with everything still in place. You can not touch anything while touring the riverboat. The other levels showed the crew and passenger rooms. More than one to expect on a riverboat. Even the technology of the past is impressive. Fortunately. They do have modern air conditioning on the boat making the tour easier in the close quarters of each room. It's amazing to learn how long this riverboat was in service and the many...

It is pretty cool to check out if you haven't been on a working boat and this is coming from a person who works on tugs and pushboats. I worked on the red pushboat and company United Tugs as deckhand from the start of towing / tailing the riverboat down south to Hudson Drydock in Morgan City, La.. Then taken barge and boat back up through the Achafalaya river; having to cut the mast off the top of the wheelhouse to fit under the overpass during low tide and still was able to touch the bridge while passing under. That was me climbing the later with the life vest and dressed in black. It was a wonderful experience that I'll never forget and just as exciting visiting it 10 years after as a museum. I was so young then and the Vicksburg people were so nice and very friendly and such a beautiful place. The only problem was after listening to some music that afternoon having a couple this flat swamp land boy was worried about walking down dat hill to get back to da...

I loved this museum. First of all, it's completely free! I went with my kids ages 2, 4, and 6 and we all enjoyed it. The people at the information desk were SO nice and answered all of our questions.

They have an entire boat next to the museum that you can explore. There are 4 levels and it was a lot of fun to see a piece of the Mississippi River history. There are activities in every level of the boat. The main deck is also air conditioned.

The other exhibits were also fun. They had a fresh aquarium with catfish and bass. There were displays about the history and development of Vicksburg and the importance of water travel ways.

Outside they had a water and sand table and a model of the Mississippi River for the kids to splash in.

When we left they gave the kids water safety bags. I also left my phone there on accident and the folks there helped me...