Hernando, Mississippi is a small town just south of Memphis, Tennessee. Hernando is also known as "Mississippi's Front Porch." This name conjures up visions of the Old South, with Antebellum homes with porches stretching across the front, complete with wooden rocking chairs and gallons of lemonade and sweet tea. Northern Mississippi has become a popular place for people in the Memphis area to move to, due the much lower cost of living than in the city proper, despite there being no income tax in the state of Tennessee. The land value in Hernando is incredibly low.
Between the hot and humid summers, the amazingly beautiful scenery and the antique homes and buildings, this imagery is very appropriate for Hernando, as it is the very definition of a Southern town.
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Hernando is named after the great Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, who was the first European to travel the Mississippi River. Some even believe that the area was his final resting place in the mid-1500s.
In 1836, the area had become a part of the growing European American population, as earlier in the decade the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes had been forced to sign a treaty requiring them to relocate to Oklahoma. American settlers of European descent began to set up borders and the area was eventually declared part of the state of Mississippi. Hernando eventually became the county seat, and served as a transitional city when leaving the more urban Memphis into the much more rural interior of Mississippi.
Several famous people in history hail from this small town, including several pioneers of the blues, including Garfield Akers, "Mojo" Buford, and Jim Jackson. Because of its relatively cheap cost of living and location near Memphis, several stars including Jerry Lee Lewis chose to move to the area and call the town home.
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Because it is along a major trade thoroughfare, Hernando has several amazing restaurants that span the whole range of tastes and flavors.
A lot of people go to Memphis for its world class barbecue, but their are several restaurants in the surrounding area that maintain the great barbecue tradition. One of those is Coleman's Bar-B-Que in Hernando. Opened in 1971, Coleman's has served the entire county their unique recipes and mouth-watering sauces. They serve breakfast from 6:00 AM until 10:30 AM, and for the rest of the day serve up lunch and dinner including hamburgers, pulled pork, and several other meats and sides.
As the South continues to become home an ever-growing Latino population, Mexican food has become a popular staple. Taco Felix is one of the most popular dining spots in the entire city. Every day for lunch and for dinner, the parking lot is full and the wait is fairly long. Everyone in town loves this place. They even serve both American and Mexican-style breakfast in the morning. The best bet is to get there early to get a decent seat to avoid waiting for too long.
There are also several popular bed and breakfast farms in the town, that let people experience waking up far away from the city lights, without all of the hassle of having to gather the chickens or milk the cows. One of these is Meadow View Farm, which has several rooms for rent, and can even be rented out for formal get-togethers like weddings.
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Hernando is a part of the DeSoto County School District, which is made up of around 30,000 students, the largest in the state. Although the schools are not among the very highest-ranked in the state, all of them are ranked at least at level 3, and the vast majority of them are ranked as level 5 superior schools.
The Advanced Placement participation at Hernando High School is at 18%. Of that group, 43% of the participants pass the end-of-term exam. According to the U.S. News and World Reports publication, the college readiness of Hernando students is a 10.6. The students have a 76% proficiency in English studies, and a 91% proficiency in algebra.
While Mississippi has some of the worst schools in the country, the DeSoto County School District is truly a diamond in the rough. This means a child can get all of the perks of living in a rural area, like more outdoor activities, without having to suffer on an educational front.
The only thing that has changed in the area since Hernando de Soto traveled the area is the invention of electricity and the automobile. Beyond that, the area still has a wealth of natural beauty that is hard to find outside of a major metropolitan area like Memphis.
There are tall forests with nature trails to hike, several lakes to fish and walk around, and of course the beautiful campgrounds that surround Arkabutla Lake.
Arkabutla Lake is a reservoir of the Coldwater River that spans approximately 57,000 acres. Millions of people visit its several camping areas a year, including the public area on the Hernando side of the lake. This lake was designed by the Army Corps of Engineers to help prevent the flooding that has occurred in the past in the surrounding area.
