Page 114 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2024

LIVING HISTORY
REVIVING A
Restored Ocean Springs Gem is Now a Boutique Hotel
story by Cherie Ward photos by Madeline Simpson
and courtesy of Kim and Troy Mitchell and Ocean Springs Historical Society
When Kim Mitchell first saw the house and property at 1101 Iberville Drive in Ocean Springs, she just knew she was in a magical place.
“I fell in love with it immediately,” she said. “As soon as I saw it, I just knew it could be a boutique hotel.”
She and her husband Troy were looking to move from Central Illinois to the Gulf Coast. He was born in Biloxi but his family moved northward when he was a child so his father could pursue his career. He grew up there, met his wife, and they raised four children in a small Illinois town and worked in the hospitality business. “In some ways, Ocean Springs reminds me of it,” she said.
The Mitchells began traveling back to the Coast after their children were grown. Each time they came, they found
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themselves wanting to stay longer. With the blessing of their children, they began the search for a new opportunity in a warmer climate.
“And this was it,” she said. “We’d thought about getting a condo or something like that, but I told my husband I have a vision for the house and the property.”
That vision yielded the now Mockingbird Inn, but little did she know just how magical of a place it was at first glance, or even when they bought the house and property in 2021. The couple talked to the Iberville Drive neighbors and a historian and discovered they were surrounded by a vast amount of Ocean Springs yore that included the site of the first hotel in the City of Discovery in the early 1800s.
Hundreds of years ago, a myriad of mineral springs flowed in www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living
Jesse Boyd’s home in the 1940s.