Stars over Amory.

Amory was a planned city, established in 1888 as the exact midpoint between Memphis and Birmingham. It was named after the magnate Harcourt Amory who owned the railroad—the K.C.M. & B.—that did the planning, planning which is evident even today in the generous width of the city streets, where you can wander without ever feeling crowded.

While you’re wandering, make sure you make a stop at the Amory Regional Museum, located in a former hospital, and now listed on the National Register of Historic Place. Exhibits here range from pre-historic artifacts dating from 9,000 BC to railroad history to medical instruments from the 19th century. There’s also a passenger coach, the Pasadena Hills No. 1251.

The railroad heritage in Amory is woven through the culture as well as the landscape. Frisco Park, located in the heart of downtown, sums up the past with a statue and a steam engine. The statue is of a Confederate soldier, the steam engine is Frisco’s Baldwin Steam locomotive built in 1929. This is the engine that pulled Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s train through the South in 1933. At a time when the state’s farm foreclosures stood at an all-time high, Roosevelt gave Mississippians hope—his visit was a bright spot in a dark time.

In more recent years, a bright spot has come courtesy of Hollywood super agent Sam Haskell, whose bi-annual “Stars over Mississippi” benefit concert brings some of the biggest stars in Hollywood to Amory for a kind of concert, confab and all around good time. The proceeds from the “Stars” go toward the Mary Kirkpatrick Haskell Scholarship Foundation, which since 1992 has raised more than $4 million to help educate more than 425 students from Amory and the Monroe County area.

But you don’t have to wait for Hollywood to come calling before you make your visit here to Amory, Aberdeen, Columbus or Macon. Around this region, the stars are always out. Let the gazing—and the gossiping—begin!