On the day she decided to leave Utah, Kathy Rodriguez slipped down her icy driveway trying to get her mail.
“That’s it,” she recalled saying. “I am going to move somewhere it doesn’t snow.”
She started searching. Where could she live by the water? Where could she afford a home?
Her answer: Mississippi.
Even as the state worries about its declining population , all along the Coast there are signs of a different story. Rodriguez is part of a growing migration of people from neighboring states and around the country who are leaving families and hometowns to start new lives in South Mississippi.
They are coming from everywhere: Louisiana and Tennessee, but also Washington, Georgia, California and Arizona.
They are veterans and retirees , snowbirds and twenty-somethings. Some are still learning to peel crawfish or adapting to the summer heat. But drawn by the beaches, casinos, low taxes and cheap living , the newcomers are moving to the Coast to stay.
“You can buy a lot more house here than you can in California,” said Philip Demoran, an Ocean Springs-based real estate agent who has seen people move from Colorado and New York. “We’re just desirable for the way of life we have.”