Deer Island — The Hermit's Island

The island that floats in every Biloxi beach photograph — that low green smudge on the horizon — is real. Deer Island: a 400-acre barrier island close enough to see, far enough to feel wild. It's a state coastal preserve now, managed for wading birds, sea turtles, and the last maritime forest on the Mississippi coast. In the early 1900s, a man named Jean Guilhot lived alone here for years. The Hermit of Deer Island. He's buried in the Old Biloxi Cemetery, but the island still holds the shape of that solitude. You can kayak or take a small boat. No facilities. No people. Just the forest that survived when the rest of the coast didn't, and the birds that come because it did.