GULFPORT, a city of south-eastern Mississippi, U.S.A., on Mississippi sound (Gulf of Mexico), about half-way between Mobile and New Orleans ; a port of entry and the county seat of Harrison county. It is on Federal highways 49 and 90 (the Old Spanish trail), and is served by the Illinois Central and the Louisville and Nashville railways, and by numerous ocean steam ship lines. The population was 8,157 in 1920 (24% negroes) and was 12,547 in 193o by the Federal census. Gulfport has an area of 15 sq.m., with a frontage of 6m. on the gulf and a good deep-water harbour (constructed since 1901). The shore is protected by a 24m. sea-wall of reinforced concrete, faced with steps leading from the promenade along the top down to the bathing beaches below. The commerce of the port in 1925 amounted to 603,722 tons, valued at $13,488,011 (65% exports to foreign countries), and consisted largely of receipts of lumber, salt of potash, phos phate rock and acid phosphate, fish and oysters, groceries, grain and sugar, and shipments of lumber, staves and headings, creo soted piling, cotton-seed cake and meal, rosin, glucose and crushed oyster shells. There are large lumber mills and railroad shops. Gulfport is both a summer and a winter resort, and is the of a U.S. Veterans' Bureau hospital. Harrison county was the sec ond in the United States to provide a county health department and as a result malaria and hookworm disease have been prac tically eliminated and tuberculosis reduced to relatively few cases. Gulfport was founded in 1898.