Memphis

Memphis was founded on May 22, 1819, by three land speculators — John Overton, James Winchester, and a young Andrew Jackson — who named it after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile. Both cities sit on a river on high bluffs, and Memphis still calls itself the Bluff City because of it. It grew into the world’s largest spot cotton market and hardwood lumber market, the kind of unglamorous economic engine that quietly built a lot of the rest of the city’s culture.

In 1903 the mayor recruited a young bandleader named W.C. Handy to lead the Knights of Pythias band, and Handy started writing down the blues he heard on Beale Street. His 1916 song “Beale Street Blues” helped rename the street in the public imagination, and Congress made it official in 1977, declaring Beale Street the “Home of the Blues.” Down the road, Sam Phillips opened Sun Studio on January 3, 1950, with a motto — “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime” — that meant recording weddings and funerals just to keep the lights on until an 18-year-old truck driver named Elvis Presley walked in. Many historians point to a 1951 Sun session, Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88,” as the first rock and roll record; its fuzzy guitar tone came from an amplifier cone that had been damaged and was stuffed with wadded newspaper to hold it together. Stax Records, a few miles south, later went bankrupt and its studio was sold for $10 to a local church.

Memphis holds one of the country’s most important civil rights landmarks. The Lorraine Motel opened as the Windsor Hotel in 1924, and Walter Bailey bought and renamed it in 1945, running it as one of the few Memphis motels that welcomed Black travelers during segregation. Martin Luther King Jr. was staying there on April 4, 1968. The motel closed to guests in 1988, and after a long restoration it reopened as the National Civil Rights Museum, dedicated July 4, 1991, tracing the movement’s history from the 17th century to the present; it became a Smithsonian affiliate in 2016. The full route through the museum takes about two hours.

Graceland is the reason a lot of people plan the whole trip. Elvis Presley bought the estate on March 19, 1957 for $102,500, looking for a buffer from fans who’d found his previous house. It opened to the public in 1982 and now draws roughly 600,000 visitors a year, second in the country only to the White House. The Jungle Room, with its indoor waterfall of cut fieldstone and Hawaiian décor, is exactly as strange as photos make it look — Elvis turned it into a working recording studio in 1976 for his last two albums.

Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous has served dry-rub ribs from a basement across from the Peabody Hotel since 1948. Charlie Vergos built his own rub from his father’s Greek seasoning blend, added paprika, and turned what most Memphis cooks treated as scrap meat into the city’s signature dish. It’s at 52 South Second Street, reached through a downtown alley.

Memphis barbecue splits into dry and wet camps — Memphis Travel calls dry versus wet the defining debate, with dry ribs coated in a blend of spices and smoked without sauce, and wet ribs basted during cooking and sauced before serving. Rendezvous serves its signature dry-rub ribs.

9 breweries within 10 miles of Memphis, one of them a brewpub with a kitchen.

Brewpub locations from Open Brewery DB (MIT)

3 more Highway Heads places lie within about 180 miles of Memphis in a straight line — far enough that most are a night away rather than an afternoon.

• TupeloMississippiabout 100 mi
• Little RockArkansasabout 130 mi
• Hot SpringsArkansasabout 180 mi

• Billy Tripp's MindfieldFolk art / sculpture gardenBrownsvilleabout 54 miles away

  Cost to see it

  Free

  When you can see it

  Any time — outdoors, visible from the road

  Nearest road

  I-40 exit 56 / US-70

  Huge self-built steel tower sculpture, still growing for decades

  Read on the page we checked

These are things you can go and look at, not a recommendation of any of them. Oddities move, get sold and quietly disappear more than anything else we list, so check anything you are driving a long way for. Some sit on private land and can only be seen from the road — please do not go onto anyone’s property. Every entry links the page we read it off.

Budget two full days for Memphis itself — one for downtown, Beale Street and the Civil Rights Museum, one for Graceland and the music sites in Whitehaven and South Memphis.

Spring and fall are the milder seasons. Memphis Travel says highs in June, July and August typically range from 85 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity at its highest, and that spring and fall offer the most comfortable temperatures with relatively low humidity, a point that applies to outdoor stops like Shelby Farms and Beale Street.

The National Civil Rights Museum sells timed tickets online only and is closed on Tuesdays; plan on 1.5 to 2 hours inside.

Downtown is walkable once you're parked, and a free trolley runs along Main Street. Graceland sits about 7 miles south of Beale Street, so it is a separate stop rather than part of the same walk.

Graceland

Address

3717 Elvis Presley Blvd, Memphis, TN 38116 (visitor entrance)

Hours

Daily, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.; last mansion tour at 4 p.m.

Price

From ~$85 (adult) for the mansion tour; higher tiers add the planes and archives^*

Link

graceland.com

*Fees subject to change, please check graceland.com for updated information.

We checked opening hours and fees on 2026-09-21. These change without notice — confirm with civilrightsmuseum.org, graceland.com and matatransit.com the week you travel.

Straight-line distance from Memphis, not drive time.

• Frederick W. Smith International (MEM) — 8 miles
• Millington-Memphis (NQA) — 18 miles
• Arkansas International (BYH) — 57 miles