Holly Springs, Mississippi, is a small town with deep roots in a unique strain of southern music called hill country blues. “Not much has changed here since the end of the War Between the States,” author and critic Amanda Petrusich wrote in her 2009 Preservation magazine story, “Songs of the South.” Holly Springs was added to the state’s official Mississippi Blues Trail around the same time, with a large blue commemorative marker placed prominently on the corner of Van Dorn Avenue and North Center Street. Seven years later, the town is still a great place for visitors to get a taste of what makes this region in the northwestern part of Mississippi so unique.

In the winter 2016 issue of Preservation magazine, writer Beth Ann Fennelly takes you on a journey through the Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area, but Holly Springs holds another chapter of the state's rich history. The town is 45 miles southeast of Memphis, 22 miles north of Oxford, and 45 miles northwest of Tupelo.

Besides its homegrown musical claim to fame, it’s also a great place to explore Civil War history, with an abundance of stately antebellum houses that are open to the public for walking or driving tours. To help you make the most of any trip to this hidden Southern gem, we’ve compiled a list of must-see (and must-eat) spots that are sure to give you the blues—in a good way.

Phillips Grocery

Housed in a two-story structure that was originally constructed as a saloon by a former Confederate soldier in 1892, Phillips Grocery is widely regarded as the place to go for one of the greatest cheeseburgers in America. The interior is also filled with bits of history, from vintage Coca-Cola signs to old saws and bicycles. There’s a roll of paper towels on every table, just in case your order of fried okra (another Phillips Grocery specialty) gets your fingers a little too greasy.

Walter Place

Dubbed “Mississippi’s Most Expensive Mansion” by Curbed in 2011 (when it went on sale for $15 million,) Walter Place was built in 1830 for railroad baron Harvey Washington Walter. A combination of Greek Revival and Gothic Revival architectural styles, Walter Place was the temporary home of General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia during the Union occupation of the south during the Civil War, and it housed quarantined patients during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878. Restored to its original antebellum glory by its owners in the 1970s, it holds 12 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, and a hundred-year-old botanical garden. It’s currently for sale and there are no private tours of the interior available, but tourists can drive by and marvel at prominent Holly Springs architect Spires Boling’s handiwork.

Honorable Mention: Graceland Too

Although this site is no longer open to the public following owner Paul McLeod’s death in 2014, Graceland Too was, for many years, one of the premier tourist attractions in Holly Springs. As an amateur recreation of Elvis’ famed estate, Graceland Too featured MacLeod’s reported four copies of every record Elvis ever made, as well as cardboard cutouts and facsimiles of The King and a whole lot of other memorabilia. It was notoriously open to the public 24 hours a day, every day, and its exterior color scheme progressed from pink, to white, to black and blue. A local group calling itself Friends of Graceland Too is in the process of collecting and preserving an archive of MacLeod’s vast collection, consisting of books, documents, and various other items. They also saved many of the most iconic artifacts and donated them to the Marshall County Historical Museum for permanent display.

Van Dorn’s Raid Driving Tour

Holly Springs is also famous for being the site of Van Dorn’s Raid during the Civil War. In order to stop Ulysses S. Grant’s impending occupation of Vicksburg, Confederate General Earl Van Dorn led three cavalry brigades into Holly Springs on December 20, 1862, and raided the Mississippi Central train station, seizing supplies and cutting railroad and telegraph lines. Although Grant’s Union troops eventually seized Vicksburg in the spring of 1863, Van Dorn’s Raid disrupted their advance. This driving tour encompasses key Holly Springs sites that played a role in the events. Check with the Holly Springs Tourism & Recreation Bureau for details.

Aikei Pro’s Record Shop

Although this ramshackle one-story record shop may not look like much from the outside, it’s actually a repository of obscure blues gems (and some old radio parts) carefully curated by proprietor David Caldwell, a local blues expert, former Tuskegee Airman, and one-time Civil Rights activist. Though the store doesn’t keep regular hours, Caldwell can be found sitting outside most days, and inside its doors patrons will discover a Southern experience unlike any other. Caldwell is also known for his wealth of knowledge and stories about local bluesmen Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, close personal friends who are also known as the fathers of hill country blues.