Tupelo, birthplace of Elvis Presley and the seventh largest city in Mississippi, is located in northeast Mississippi between Memphis, Tennessee and Birmingham, Alabama.

The county seat of Lee County, Tupelo population was 34,211 as of the 2000 census.

Tupelo is a three time "All-America City Award" winner and boasts one of the largest furniture manufacturing industries nationwide. As journalist Dennis Seid of The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal noted in the February, 2006 edition of The Northeast Mississippi Business Journal, furniture manufacturing is crucial to the economy of Northeast Mississippi, "providing some 22,000 jobs, or almost 13% of the region's employment... with a $732 million annual payroll... producing $2.25 billion worth of goods."

Tupelo is also home to the North Mississippi Medical Center, not only the largest hospital in Mississippi but also the largest non-metropolitan hospital in the United States. It serves people in North Mississippi, northwest Alabama and portions of Tennessee.

The town was originally named Gum Pond prior to the American Civil War, supposedly due to the high number of tupelo trees, locally known as sweetgum, that grow in the area. The city still hosts the Gumtree Arts Festival each year. In the post-Civil War era, Tupelo became the northern Mississippi site for the crossing of a railroad, which brought industry to the town, establishing it as the center of commerce in the northern part of the state. Once the town began to grow, Gumpond took on the name Tupelo, naming the town after the small Civil War battle that took place on the site, now designated as Tupelo National Battlefield, a picture of which can be seen here. That Battle of Tupelo was in turn named for the tupelo trees of the area.

Incorporated in 1870 with a population of 618, Tupelo made national history in 1934 as the first city in the United States to provide its citizens with electric power through the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited this First TVA City.

U.S. Highway 78 passes through Tupelo, and is slated to become Interstate 22 within a few years.

Tupelo is the headquarters of the historic Natchez Trace Parkway, connecting Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, while following the route of the original Natchez Trace trail.

Tupelo is home to three television stations: WTVA (9), an NBC affiliate; WLOV (27), a FOX affiliate, and WKDH (45), an ABC affiliate. All three stations are located just outside the Tupelo city limits and were owned by Frank K. Spain until his death on April 26, 2006. An interview with Spain by historian Martis D. Ramage,Jr., covering subjects from Tupelo's television history to collecting the rare automobiles that would find a permanent home at the Tupelo Automobile Museum, can be found here.

Tupelo is also home to satellite campuses of the University of Mississippi, Itawamba Community College, and the Mississippi University for Women.

Public library services, including bookmobile service, are provided by the Lee County Library, the Wi-Fi headquarters of the Lee-Itawamba Library System. The library's Mississippi Room collection, which includes a large number of past articles from local & regional newspapers about Elvis Presley, attracts Presley researchers and fans from around the world during their visits to Tupelo. The Lee County Library's current facility (built in 1971 on the site of the original library, the historic John Allen home at the corner of Madison and Jefferson) can be seen here.

Authors who have spoken at the Lee County Library's annual Helen Foster Lecture series since its inception in 1974 have included Shelby Foote, Alex Haley, John Grisham, Rick Bragg, Pat Conroy, Ernest Gaines, Willie Morris, Beverly Sills and Alice Walker.

The local daily newspaper is The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, the fastest growing newspaper in Mississippi. Lloyd Gray is the newspaper's editor, Joe Rutherford is the editorial page editor and the publisher & chairman is Billy Crews.

Tupelo is the headquarters of two banking institutions - BancorpSouth, with approximately $11.8 billion in assets (2006) under chairman and CEO Aubrey Patterson, and Renasant, with assets of approximately $2.4 billion (2006) under chairman and CEO Robin McGraw.

The headquarters for the American Family Association (AFA), a conservative, fundamentalist Christian non-profit organization founded by Rev. Donald Wildmon in 1977, is based in Tupelo.

Tupelo's coliseum, the BancorpSouth Center, opened in 1993 and has hosted concerts by entertainers such as The Eagles, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Aerosmith, Kiss, and Elton John. A photo of the $16 million BancorpSouth Center is available here.

One of the largest automobile museums in North America, the Tupelo Automobile Museum opened on December 7, 2002, Pearl Harbor Day, and was designated the official State of Mississippi automobile museum in the spring of 2003. The museum is home to more than 150 rare automobiles, a list of which can be seen here. Founded by the late WTVA television station owner Frank K. Spain , the museum's curator is Max Berryhill.

Tupelo, one of the few small U.S. cities that enjoys a professional orchestra, is home to the Tupelo Symphony Orchestra, whose season runs from September-April with concerts held at the Tupelo Civic Auditorium. Special conductors and soloists appear regularly and the symphony also holds a free annual July 4th outdoor concert at Tupelo's Ballard Park that draws thousands of fans.

Built in 1937, Tupelo's beautiful Church Street Elementary School was hailed as one of the most outstanding designs of its time. A scale model of this Art Moderne structure was displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair as "the ideal elementary school." The front of the school can be seen here.

In politics, the city's current mayor is Republican Ed Neelly. President of the Tupelo City Council is Dick Hill. The new city hall building is located in downtown Tupelo's Fairpark District and can be seen here.

Located in the First Congressional District of Mississippi, Tupelo has been represented in the U. S. House of Representatives since 1995 by Roger Wicker, a Tupelo Republican who was reelected in 2004 with 71% of the vote.

In 2005, under the leadership of the Tupelo Rotary Club, the city unveiled a statue of Chief Tishomingo, a leader of the Chickasaw people, in front of the new city hall.

Tupelo's Oren Dunn City Museum displays relics from the American Civil War Battle of Tupelo as well as Indian artifacts and NASA exhibits.

2006 marked the 70th anniversary of the 1936 Tupelo Tornado, the fourth deadliest tornado in United States history and part of the Tupelo-Gainesville Outbreak of tornadoes on April 5-6, 1936. Historian Martis D. Ramage, Jr.'s book, "Tupelo, Mississippi, Tornado of 1936," chronicles the devastation of the tornado, with many rare photographs. A photo of Tupelo after the 1936 tornado can be seen here.

Some fascinating oral history interviews by Ramage on Tupelo and Lee County, Mississippi history, covering subjects from the 1935 visit of FDR to the tornado of 1936 to George McLean to Elvis Presley, include -

Janelle McComb interview here

Aaron Morgan interview here and

Howard Dudley "Blue" Long interview here.

2006 was the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Elvis Presley Homecoming in Tupelo, the highlight of which was the famous 1956 concert at the Mississippi-Alabama State Farm & Dairy Show. The event was recreated at the eighth Elvis Presley Festival in Tupelo on June 2-4, 2006. The original site of the concert, the fairgrounds, is now part of Tupelo's Fairpark District. Documentary filmmakers Roy Turner and Jim Palmer premiered their new Presley documentary, "The Homecoming: Tupelo Welcomes Elvis Home", at the 2006 festival. A photo of Elvis Presley at the 1956 Tupelo concert can be seen here.