Jonesboro

We drove into Jonesboro from the west, through so many miles of dead-flat rice fields that when Crowley’s Ridge rose out of nowhere — a wooded, sixty-foot swell of land running north to south through otherwise pancake-flat Delta — Lia actually sat up in her seat. It’s a strange bit of geology, a loess ridge that shouldn’t exist here, and the whole town of Jonesboro is built along its spine, which gives it hills, hardwood trees, and a slightly different feel from every other Arkansas Delta town we’d passed through that week.

Crowley’s Ridge and downtown Jonesboro

The historic core sits where the ridge dips down toward Union Street, a few blocks of brick storefronts that have been slowly reclaimed by coffee shops and a couple of genuinely good restaurants rather than bulldozed for parking. We found a mural-lined alley off Main that local art students had covered floor to ceiling — Delta blues musicians, cotton fields, a giant catfish — and spent twenty minutes just walking its length. Arkansas State University sits at the north end of downtown, and its presence means Jonesboro has a younger energy than its Delta neighbors, more bars open past nine, more independent bookstores that haven’t given up.

Catfish, tamales, and the Delta on a plate

Jonesboro sits close enough to the Mississippi River hot tamale belt that we found them on menus alongside the expected fried catfish and hushpuppies, a reminder that this stretch of Arkansas absorbed as much culinary influence from the river as from the cotton fields around it. We ate at a no-frills spot near the courthouse where the catfish came whole, cornmeal-crusted, with a squeeze bottle of hot sauce that had clearly been refilled a thousand times. Lia, who grew up nowhere near catfish country, declared it better than anything we’d had in Memphis, which started an argument that lasted the rest of the drive.

Getting There

Jonesboro has its own small regional airport, but most travelers fly into Memphis International, about seventy-five miles east, and drive over on I-55 and Highway 63 in a little over an hour. A car is essential — Jonesboro is spread wide across the ridge and the surrounding Delta, and there’s no walkable way to string downtown, the university, and the outlying catfish joints together.