About 38,000 people call Tupelo home, a northeast Mississippi city best known as the birthplace of Elvis Presley. You can visit the tiny house where he was born, the museum beside it, and the hardware store where his mother bought him his first guitar, and the town throws an Elvis festival each June. It is also the headquarters of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a quiet, scenic road that is good for driving and hiking, and it has a civil war battlefield site and a car museum.
The city works as the retail and medical hub for the region, with a large hospital and a furniture manufacturing tradition. Living is affordable and steady, with homes priced well below the national average and a good share of owners. Property crime is above average, so lock your car. Tornadoes and severe storms are the big weather risk, and summers are hot and muggy. Memphis is about 100 miles away.
Cities with a similar character, anywhere on the site.
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- Known as
- Birthplace of Elvis Presley; Home of the Natchez Trace Parkway headquarters; Furniture Capital of the World (regional title); The Hub of North Mississippi
- Founded
- 1821 area settled after Chickasaw land cession; 1870 incorporated as a town
- Languages
- English; Spanish (small and growing community); Southern American English dialect
- Airports
- Tupelo Regional Airport (TUP), about 4 miles northeast of downtown with limited commercial service (Contour Airlines); Memphis International (MEM), about 100 miles northwest; Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International (BHM), about 130 miles southeast; Nashville International (BNA), about 200 miles northeast
- Tipping
- Restaurants 18-20%; bars $1-2 per drink; taxis and rideshare 15-20%; hotel housekeeping $3-5 per night; bellhops $2-5 per bag; counter service optional
About this data
Population 38,087 (2025) and land area 64.38 sq mi, median value and rent from Census QuickFacts. Tupelo is the principal city of the Tupelo micropolitan statistical area (not a metropolitan area) covering Itawamba, Lee and Pontotoc counties; the figure 138,390 is its 2020 Census population from Wikipedia. Elevation, coordinates, founding, event months (several unverified as current), hotel ranges, tipping, cost-of-living index, crime, tornado history and airport distances and commercial service are approximate or from general knowledge and not verified in this pass. Official URLs seen in search results but not load-tested. Lower confidence overall.
