Jitney Jungle

Jitney Jungle was the name of several grocery stores in Hattiesburg from the 1920s until the early 2000s.

The first Jitney Jungle opened on Main Street near Bushman Street in downtown Hattiesburg across the street from Thrifty Lane on July 3, 1926.

On September 21, 1929, a second Jitney Jungle opened at 940 Main Street. On October 8, 1932, it was converted to a Three Star grocery store.

On September 2, 1938, Hattiesburg's first modern 7000 square-feet "cash-and-carry" Jitney Jungle opened at the corner of Hardy Street and West Pine Street. It was advertised as the first air-conditioned store in Hattiesburg. New cash registers ("modern, speedy machines") printed "the number of articles purchased and the price of each" on customers' receipts. Customers used shopping carts "with rubber-tired coasters and a handle that makes pushing and guiding them quite easy." Thirty-one feet of refrigerators stretched across the rear of the store. The two baskets of each shopping cart were detachable. (Traditionally shoppers had used hand-held baskets rather than shopping carts.) After shopping a clerk would "lift the baskets off the carrier, check and bag the merchandise for the customer, and deliver it to the customer's car."

Just a few months later, on November 9, 1938, a second store was open at 212 Main Street. A year later it was expanded, doubling its size, and reopened on November 23, 1939.

On September 2, 1948, another Jitney Jungle opened at 712 James Street in the Hospital Shopping Center across the street from what is now the Hattiesburg Police Station.

By 1957 there was another Jitney Jungle in Petal.

On September 29, 1960, Jitney Jungle opened in the Hardy Street Mart.

Around 1964 Jitney Jungle opened at 114 South Main Street in Petal.

On February 3, 1975, Jitney Jungle opened another location at Cloverleaf Mall where Captain D's stands today.

For a few years, from around the mid 1990s until the early 2000s, the Winn Dixie location at the Lincoln Square Shopping Center was a Jitney Jungle.