Mississippi's Treasured Islands

National Park Ranger Jack Madison on Ship Island

Arizona has the Grand Canyon. Wyoming, Montana and Idaho share Yellowstone. But as MPB’s Ron Brown reports, the largest national park of it’s kind is in Mississippi right off the gulf coast.

Sixty-four-year-old Jack Madison has been leaving his Biloxi home behind for years and doing what most men only dream of… jumping aboard a boat and disappearing to an island get away.
It’s something the Mississippi native has been doing ever since he was a child.

“To me, going out to the island is a place to get away from it all. I get my battery charged every time I go out there. Walk a beach, do whatever you want to, it’s a great place to go.”

The island is Ship Island, and it’s a quick boat trip from the Mississippi gulf shore, just 11 miles away.

Jack Madison is a volunteer with the National Park Service. And Ship Island is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, a string of islands stretching from the eastern tip of Santa Rosa Island in Florida to Ship, Horn and Cat Islands in Mississippi.

Madison sees volunteering with the park service as giving something back to the islands, and passing on what has been passed on in his family from generations.

“I might say that I was lucky enough, that when I was growing up here on the gulf coast I had a grandfather as well as a father that took me out to the islands while I was growing up. To the point that every island out there has certain memories for me today as well.”

Gulf Islands is the largest National Seashore in the United States. It’s 160 miles of islands and seashores off the coast of Mississippi are a diverse home to salt marshes, bayous, archaeological sites of historical significance, nature trails and of course plenty of fish and wildlife.

“We have a lot of people from other states that come down here. You might say a long one day trip like from Missouri, Arkansas, lot of Louisiana folks come over here, school groups as well, also from Alabama we have a large number as well.”

Andrew Signell was happy to drive 450 miles to Gulfport where he and his family caught the ferry to Ship Island to spend the on the beach in front of the rhythmic ocean waves .

“It’s pretty nice, it’s a nice beach… solitude. Very nice view… open water. Clear water. Nice white sand beaches. It’s only a 6 hour drive from Tennessee where we live, so it’s not that bad.”

While some families are happy to drive several hours to spend a day or night on the islands, Susan Blair, the Mississippi District Interpreter at Gulf Islands National Seashore says some Mississippians still don’t know the national park is just a few miles away.

“A lot of people that live here along the Mississippi Gulf Coast don’t realize what they have in their own back yard. We get calls sometimes say… what do you do? Where’s the park, where’s it located, and they really don’t know what we have to offer out here as far as recreational opportunities.”

For many families like Andy Smith’s of Ocean Springs, a day on Ship Island means a day to sit back, relax and watch nature.

“The wildlife, the shore birds, they’ll get real close to you, they’re not skittish, blue crabs galore just you coulda come out and got a limit of blue crabs in an hour with a dip net, saw some dolphin, saw some big fish, some drum come in and strike some bait fish close to the shore.”

Gulf Islands Seashore Chief of Interpretation and Education Gail Bishop says when visitors come to the islands, they are seeing nature as unfiltered as it can get on an island. And that is a rare treat.

“There are very few places left around the United States , very few islands left that have not been changed by development or by buildings being placed there. And Horn and Petit Bois have the strictest protection because they’re federally designated wilderness islands. So when people out there it’s just their footprints, so there will be no buildings, no roads out there. It’ll be wild and primeval”

As wild and untouched as they were was over 50 years ago when Jack Madison’s grandfather took him out to the islands to fish, and camp and swim.

“We have islands out there that’s gonna be there forever for the taxpayer to come and visit and we hope for it to remain as such.”

And because they’re part of the national park system, admission to the islands continues to be free. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.