Hidden Gems in Memphis: 6 Cheap Base Finds

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6 Memphis picks most visitors skip

Beale Street and Graceland earn the crowds for good reason, but a handful of Memphis’s best spots sit just outside that circuit, several of them free. Below are 6 picks, plus one worth the drive if a Clarksdale day trip is already on the schedule.

  1. Big River Crossing. Free, about a mile long, the pedestrian and bike bridge crosses the Mississippi from downtown Memphis into West Memphis, Arkansas, the easiest way to say you’ve set foot in a second state on this trip, no car needed.
  2. National Ornamental Metal Museum. The only US museum dedicated entirely to metalworking, set on a bluff over the river at French Fort. Sculpture and blacksmithing exhibits most first-time itineraries never reach.
  3. Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum. The Burkle Estate at 826 N 2nd St, open Tuesday through Saturday, tells the Underground Railroad story from a preserved period house rather than a standard exhibit hall.
  4. Dixon Gallery & Gardens. East Memphis, directly across from the Memphis Botanic Garden, a quieter art-and-garden combination than the Botanic Garden alone gets credit for.
  5. Overton Park Shell. The amphitheater where Elvis played his first paid concert, July 30, 1954, often cited as the first rock ’n’ roll show. Renamed back from “Levitt Shell” to its original name in 2022.
  6. Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid, after dark. The store, inside a 32-story former arena on the riverfront, stays open into the evening with its indoor cypress swamp and gators lit up, a stranger stop after Beale Street than most visitors realize is free to walk.

Worth the drive: Red’s Juke Joint, Clarksdale

If a Clarksdale day trip is already on the base-trip itinerary, Red’s Juke Joint is the pick that doesn’t show up in a quick city search. It’s a real, unpolished juke joint in the Delta blues town roughly 75-95 minutes south of Memphis on Highway 61, closer to the music’s roots than anything on Beale Street, and worth planning the Clarksdale evening around.

Is Mud Island River Park still open?

No, not as a normal attraction. The monorail has been closed since 2018 and a 2026 relaunch was postponed after water damage, so it’s currently in redevelopment limbo, check its status before planning around it rather than assuming it’s running.

Read more: see our things to do in Memphis for the paid sights these picks sit next to, or our Memphis day trips guide for the full Clarksdale plan.