Memphis, explained
Access Memphis Editorial Team 
A Memphis summer is hot, humid, and long — running roughly from late May through September, with July and August the peak. The National Weather Service’s Memphis/Mid-South office records average July highs in the mid-90s Fahrenheit, and the humidity off the Mississippi River makes the heat index feel higher than the thermometer reading most afternoons. … Read more
Late March through May, and again October into early November, are the two windows when Memphis’s weather cooperates and its calendar is busiest. Summers are long, hot and humid; winters are short and mild but not snow-free. There is no single “right” month — it depends on whether the reader wants festival crowds or an … Read more
There is no single trail sign anywhere in Memphis that reads “Riverfront Loop.” The phrase is an informal name — used by cyclists, walkers and increasingly by the city’s own planning language — for the connected chain of riverfront parks, paths and one repurposed bridge that lets someone move on foot or by bike along … Read more
Driving in Memphis means dealing with a spread-out, low-density city built around a handful of interstates and two Mississippi River bridges, a compact downtown grid with one-way streets and metered parking, and a road network that a car genuinely helps navigate, since public transit covers only part of it. Most residents drive; most visitors end … Read more
Two interstate bridges carry cars across the Mississippi River at Memphis — the Hernando de Soto Bridge (I-40) and the Memphis & Arkansas Memorial Bridge (I-55) — and a third, older bridge carries a dedicated walking and cycling path called the Big River Crossing. There is no scheduled transit line into Arkansas. Across the water … Read more
Riverside Drive is the road that runs along the Mississippi River at the base of the downtown Memphis bluff, linking the riverfront parks, the old cobblestone landing and the bridges to Arkansas. It closes, repeatedly and for different reasons, because it sits in a floodplain, hosts the city’s biggest outdoor events, and runs directly through … Read more
Cycling in Memphis works well for recreation and reasonably well for short trips within a few central neighborhoods, but poorly as a citywide substitute for driving. The terrain is flat, a long rail-trail and a converted rail bridge give genuine long-distance routes, and a bike-share network covers the core — but connected, protected on-street lanes … Read more
The Shelby Farms Greenline is a paved, multi-use trail built along a former railroad corridor, running roughly 10.65 miles from the eastern edge of Midtown Memphis out to Shelby Farms Park and on toward Cordova. It is used for walking, running and cycling, and it is maintained by the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. Where does … Read more
Memphis is walkable in sections, not as a connected whole. A handful of districts — Downtown, South Main, parts of Midtown — are dense enough to cover on foot for a day or two. Between those districts, and across most of the rest of the city, distances and road design make a car or transit … Read more
Beale Street and Sun Studio are close together, roughly a mile and a half apart in or near downtown Memphis. Stax Museum of American Soul Music sits about three miles south of both, in the Soulsville neighbourhood. Graceland is the outlier — roughly nine to ten miles south of downtown, in Whitehaven, near Memphis International … Read more
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