Interstate 20 travelers seeking tourist information will be directed to the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau while a landscaping job closes the Mississippi Welcome Center, the first of three highway projects in and around Warren County expected to kick off by Thanksgiving.

The office at the Washington Street rest stop will close Oct. 1, and workers will be moved to Mississippi Development Authority offices in Jackson, project managers with the Mississippi Department of Transportation said Tuesday. Meanwhile, signs along the interstate will guide the eastbound traveling public to Exit 4B at Clay Street, near the VCVB’s outpost at Clay and Old Highway 27.

Specifics of the project involve planting new crepe myrtle trees, Indian hawthorn bushes and various other trees and bushes to replace plants of the same type already in the ground. MDOT has awarded a $74,534 contract to Grenada-based Mayrant & Associates to perform the work, part of the state highway agency’s $354 million in jobs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Contract specifics allow the contractor to perform work from Sept. 9 through March 31, 2011. Restrooms will be closed along with the rest of the property during the work, except on Oct. 9, the day of the annual Over the River Run on the U.S. 80 bridge over the Mississippi River, project manager Jeff Curtis said.

In the second highway project, cable barriers will be installed in the median of the interstate between Bovina and the Big Black River, extending the safety barricades from where they were installed in the city about two years ago. The cable work is to begin by mid-November.

About four miles of the shock-absorbing cable fencing was installed along the highway inside Vicksburg’s corporate limits in 2008 in an effort to prevent serious accidents caused by vehicles crossing the median.

Five or six lane closures to allow contracted work trucks to enter the construction zone are expected, each lasting a few hours at a time, Curtis said. Specifics call for the work to last through July 2011. Cable fences will also go up along parts of Interstate 55 in Pike and Lincoln counties and U.S. 78 in Pontotoc, Lee and Itawamba counties. Bids on the three cabling contracts are expected to be taken Tuesday.

The third highway project will see about 24 miles of Mississippi 27 through Hinds County being resurfaced beginning in late October, Curtis said. The popular shortcut between Vicksburg and southbound Interstate 55 will close during the day at certain points between then and April 2011, though efforts are expected to be made to close only a mile at a time, Curtis said. Mount Olive-based W.E. Blain & Sons Inc. won the $4.6 million contract in September.