U.S. Route 49
highway in the United States

U.S. Route 49 (US 49) is a north–south United States highway. The highway's northern terminus is in Piggott, Arkansas, at an intersection with U.S. Route 62 (US 62). Its southern terminus is in Gulfport, Mississippi, at an intersection with US 90. US 49 is approximately 516 miles (830 km) in length.
It was at the junction of US 49 and U.S. Route 61 that blues singer Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the Devil. The highway is also the subject of songs by Big Joe Williams and Howlin' Wolf (Chester Arthur Burnett).
Route description
Mississippi
US 49 has historically been one of the most important highways in Mississippi. It was the state's first highway to see a significant rural segment four-laned. Today, it is the only four-laned route directly connecting Jackson, the state's capital and largest city, to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Some urban segments along this portion of the route maintain three or more traffic lanes in each direction.
“U.S. Route 49” enters the record as highway in the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Route, highway and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q409710. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “U.S. Route 49” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.