7 Hidden Gems: Memphis and the Delta
Beyond Beale Street and Graceland, Memphis and its Mid-South surroundings hold a handful of genuinely lesser-known stops worth building into a base itinerary.
1. Overton Park Shell
The bandshell in Overton Park hosted Elvis Presley’s first paid concert, on July 30, 1954, cited as the first rock ’n’ roll show. Renamed back from “Levitt Shell” to its original name in 2022, it still hosts free summer concerts and draws a fraction of Graceland’s crowds.
2. National Ornamental Metal Museum
Perched on a bluff over the Mississippi at French Fort, this small museum of metalwork from around the world has some of the best river views in the city, and most first-time visitors never make it out here.
3. Dixon Gallery & Gardens
An East Memphis art museum paired with formal gardens, sitting directly across from the Memphis Botanic Garden, quieter and less visited than either of the city’s headline museums downtown.
4. Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum
Also known as the Burkle Estate (826 N 2nd St, open Tuesday through Saturday), this preserved house is tied to the Underground Railroad and tells a piece of Memphis history that Beale Street and Graceland don’t cover.
5. Big River Crossing
The free, roughly 1-mile pedestrian bridge from downtown Memphis into West Memphis, Arkansas, is easy to miss if you’re only chasing the marquee sights, and it’s the simplest way to set foot in a second state without a car.
6. Broad Avenue murals
The Broad Avenue Arts District has a growing collection of large-scale street murals, a free, low-key add-on that most first-time visitors skip in favor of Beale Street’s louder draw.
7. Red’s Juke Joint, Clarksdale
75-95 minutes south in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Red’s is about as far from a polished tourist venue as Delta blues gets, an unglamorous, working juke joint that’s exactly what the word “gem” is supposed to mean. Pair it with an overnight at the Shack Up Inn, a former sharecropper-shack lodging on an old cotton plantation, for the full Delta experience rather than a rushed pass-through on the way home.
Read more: for the full day-trip picture, see the Mid-South day trips guide , or start with Memphis, Tennessee: A First-Timer’s Base .