Walk the streets of Memphis and you may almost have the bones of this mid-size city rise up in the pavement. There's a reason this place has an outsized effect on American culture. It was from Memphis the first echoes of rock n' roll radiated out across the southern airwaves prior to going on to alter the world. Decades earlier, it had been in Memphis that the Delta Blues began to migrate north towards to start dating ? with electricity and destiny in Chicago.
And it had been in Memphis in which the sounds of Stax Records helped define the Civil Rights era, belting out hits having a frequency and quality rivaled only by Motown. The city is a diamond in the rough for blue-collar tourists for generations, and though the seeds of gentrification take the perimeters off of some of its gritty areas, Bluff City remains among the best bang for your buck cities in the country.
Here are the best free activities you may enjoy in Memphis – with no lack of American history tugging at their seams.
I AM A MAN PLAZA
Music may dominate the identity of Memphis, but the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr.'s final days looms large within the city. I'm a MAN PLAZA opened in 2022, one day following the 50th anniversary of King's assassination on a Bluff City balcony in 1968.
The plaza includes a memorial to King as well as other heroes of the Civil Rights movement and is located within easy reach of Beale Street. Look for it on the south side of Clayborn Temple, an enormous church – that now sits partially abandoned – that served as a rallying point for that sanitation strikes that brought King to Memphis during that fateful week.
National Civil Rights Museum Plaza
No visit to Memphis is complete without a tour from the National Civil Rights Museum located off of South Main Street. The museum, which charges admission, is situated inside of the Lorraine Motel. However, those traveling on a tight budget or passing through after hours can still go to the museum's plaza totally free. Here, visitors can pay respects to Dr. King in front of the balcony in which the final moments of his life transpired.
A wreath permanently marks the location where he banded when an assassin's bullet took his life.
Handy Park
Visitors to Beale Street don't have to spend any money to soak in live music at Handy Park. This plaza located on the eastern end of Beale Street is named for W.C. Handy, an earlier 20th-century composer dubbed “Father of the Blues.” Long before six strings and electricity defined the sound of the blues we all know today, Handy's trumpet reverberated around Beale Street's clubs inside a 12-bar blues that became a cornerstone of modern music.
A century after Handy was topping the charts, modern blues bands play beside his statue on weekend nights.
Memphis statues
Handy's statue isn't the only reminder of bygone sounds. In fact, a 30-minute tour of downtown and midtown could place you face-to-face with Handy, Elvis Presley, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Little Melton and Johnny Cash. Every artist but Cash is located on either Beale Street or South Main Street, while Cash are available surveyed midtown's Cooper-Young district.
Tom Lee Park
For generations, the Memphis riverfront would be a hub of business activity clamoring with the sounds of steamboats and cotton bales. Nowadays, it is a well-groomed green space across the banks of the Mississippi River. You can learn the remarkable story of the shipwreck, a river rescue and the local hero for which the park is known as and deserves national fame.
Score bonus points for that gigantic statues of Elvis and B.B. King found at visitors focus on its northern border end of the park.
There will also be basketball and volleyball courts, a little waterpark and unbeatable sunset views from the Big Muddy – all free of charge.
Big River Crossing
The meandering sidewalks of Tom Lee Park lead visitors south, in the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff and towards Big River Crossing. This landmark rails-to-trail project connects Memphis to Arkansas over the historic Harahan Bridge. Big River Crossing itself reaches on the mile across the Mississippi River while connecting to a 10-mile corridor of motorcycle paths that meander through the tranquil fields of Arkansas.
Big River Crossing offers photographers an ideal backdrop from the Memphis skyline across the river and doubles being an after-dark light show for visitors to Tom Lee Park.
Shelby Farms Greenline
This 10.6-mile rails-to-trails path connects the old-growth forest in Midtown Memphis to one of the largest urban parks in the united states. Beginning in Overton Park, cyclists can connect with the Shelby Farms Greenline through the Hampline and continue on through cypress swamps and rolling pastures.
The ride goes by local watering holes like Wiseacre Brewing Company, Hampline Brewing Company, Cheffies and High Point Pizza before you take riders past a roaming buffalo herd at Shelby Farms.
From there, riders can choose to continue on towards the suburbs of Germantown or Cordova or make their long ago to Midtown. Enterprising cyclists may even connect with the Greenline in the Big River Crossing by taking the city's newly-established bike lanes from downtown.
Wolf River Greenway
The Mississippi River isn't the only waterway defining Bluff City. Its smaller tributary, the Wolf River, slices a path of wilderness from the eastern suburbs to its outlet into the Mississippi River just north of Mud Island.
Local conservation organizations have taken advantage of this natural resource by establishing the Wolf River Greenway, an in-progress cycling path that can take visitors across the banks from the Wolf River. Cyclists searching for a shorter ride can explore open phases from the Wolf River Greenway, which will eventually connect to the Greenline.
Blues Hall of Fame Museum
The city offers no shortage of top-notch music museums. Both Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Memphis Rock N' Soul Museum are world-class attractions themselves. However, the Blues Hall of Fame is no slouch.
This free museum within sight of the National Civil Rights Museum pays homage to the musicians that paved the way in which for one of the most revered genres of self-expression on the planet. You'll find the door next to the statue of Little Milton.
Metal Museum
Formerly referred to as National Ornamental Metal Museum, nowadays the Metal Museum located south of downtown Memphis has simplified its name. Entry to its indoor exhibits costs $8 for adults; however, the museum's 3.2-acres of riverside property can roam. There's more to this terrain than captivating artwork, though.
The Metal Museum sits on the former site of Fort Pickering, a Civil War-era bastion built on the website of an 18th-century French fort that itself was built around the ruins of a Mississippian cultural settlement believed to date back 1000 years. Its chief earthwork, Chisca mound, still stands beside the Metal Museum and bears the scars of their use as both a Union and Confederate stronghold throughout the Civil War.
Elmwood Cemetery
Not far from the Metal Museum, visitors may take a fascinating, macabre tour through Elmwood Cemetery. This sprawling, 80-acre compound is full of Victorian-era monuments towards the dead and it is home to a few of the city's most tragic tales.
Elmwood serves as the final resting spot for veterans of all the American war, together with local legends and also the sobering, unmarked tomb of yellow fever victims. That area, known as “no man's land,” holds thousands of Memphis who perished throughout an 1878 epidemic so deadly it cost the city its charter.
Free tours details are offered at the cemetery offices located just inside of the entrance.
The University of Memphis art museum
Memphis is known as for the ancient capital of Egypt, allegedly because the Mississippi River reminded early pioneers of the Nile. No matter origin, the town includes a long reference to Egypt, and it is flagship university has come along for that ride.
The University of Memphis hosts one of the most respected Egyptian Art and Archaeology programs on the planet. The school continues to be instrumental in a number of of the most significant historical finds in Egypt during the last decade, and its art museum houses a permanent collection from ancient Egypt that houses antiquities dating back to nearly 5000 years.
That collection includes the mummy of Irtw-irw, a nearly three millennia-old burial that has been terrifying area school children for decades.
Mighty Lights Show
Every hour from sundown to 10:30 pm., visitors along the riverfront can view an easy show of dueling bridges. Towards the north, the Hernando DeSoto Bridge pulses and oscillates inside a revolving set of patterns and colours because the Harahan Bridge to the south answers in return. Dubbed Mighty Lights, this show has been an ongoing Memphis tradition since 2022 and frequently includes nods to local music and sports teams in addition to national events.
For the best views, visit Tom Lee Park or look for a perch on the bluffs above Riverside Drive.
Skateparks
Memphis is definitely an underrated city for skateboarders. The region hosts 10 established skateparks, highlighted by projects in midtown at Tobey Park as well as in Raleigh on the site of a former shopping mall.
The sites include bowls, rails, stairs and ramps that give street skaters a place to hone their skills for free. On weeknights, the city's low amount of downtown traffic leaves a lot of its side streets open for adventurous urban explorers and skaters alike.
Mud Island
When its gates opened within the 1980s, Mud Island Riverpark was intended to be the crown jewel of the Memphis riverfront. The park contains a scale type of the Mississippi River that leads for an enormous wading pool overlooking downtown. Nowadays, the old river park works as a public green space offering some of the best views for picnicking. When the water is low, visitors may also find a secluded beach near Joe Curtis Point that's tailor-made for lounging.
Access the park via a skybridge from Front Street or by driving across the A.W. Willis Bridge near Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.
