There are numerous significant buildings that date to the period between the Civil War and World War II. Most of these structures are not accessible to the public. Information on some of these buildings is provided through walking tours that have been developed for Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, and Ocean Springs.

One building that is open to the public is the Pleasant Reed House, located on the grounds of the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi. The house was built in the late 1800s by Pleasant Reed, an African-American man who had been born into slavery and moved to Biloxi with his family after Emancipation. Another accessible building is the Gulfport Centennial Museum, located in the old Union Train Station, which documents the city's first 100 years.

A significant event in the history of the Mississippi Coast between the Civil War and World War II was the development of the seafood industry during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Fortunes were made by some in the seafood industry, and houses and gravesites of some of these wealthy individuals can still be seen in Biloxi.

For most people, though, the seafood industry meant work on a boat or in a processing factory, and the history of these people is documented at the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi. This museum is located on Point Cadet, where many of the seafood factories and worker's once made their homes. The museum is housed in a unique building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and as the early 1900s barracks for a Coast Guard air-and-sea rescue unit. The enormous hangar for the Coast Guard's seaplane is located nearby. The Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum operates two replicas of Biloxi Schooners, the working boats of the Coast's commercial fleet from the 1800s to the early 1900s that are accessible to the public through daily walk-on tours and charters.

At least two publicly accessible sites are important to the history of the modern Mississippi Gulf Coast. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) decision to locate a rocket engine test site on the Coast in the 1960s was a significant development in Hancock County's history. Today, visitors can tour this rocket test complex that is a National Historic Landmark. The other publicly accessible site is a memorial to the victims of Hurricane Camille that devastated the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast in August of 1969. The memorial is located in Biloxi on the grounds of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, a historic church--once attended by Jefferson Davis--that was one of the many buildings destroyed by Camille.