The Natchez Trace Parkway

The Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444 mile modern roadway which parallels the Old Natchez Trace.

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Imagine a course in American history that covers about 4000 years, includes some 80 lessons, covers parts of three states and is 444 miles long! That is the Natchez Trace Parkway. For two weeks we had the delightful experience of exploring it.

The Old Natchez Trace was an important wilderness road from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, 250 years ago. French explorers of the Mississippi River followed a series of Indian hunting trails on their journey back north from the River’s mouth. By 1733, they had drawn a rough map of the route. It ran through the homelands of the Natchez, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw Nations, followed alongside the Pearl and the Yockanookany Rivers through the wilderness, crossed the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers, and made its winding way to Nashville on the Cumberland River.

The journey was difficult because the trail was not marked and occasional floods created mud holes that could swallow horse and rider. Traveling the Trace was dangerous because of illness, thieves and occasional hostile Indian raids. Travel from Natchez to Nashville along the Trace could require a month, but until the invention of the steamboat in 1812, there was no other way to travel northward against the current of the Great River.

The Old Trace joined a series hunters' paths that became connected to form a route from Natchez, MS, to Nashville, TN.

Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto traveled northward from "West Florida" by way of the Trace in 1540. French trappers, returning home to Canada from selling furs in New Orleans traveled the Trace as early as 1700. Farmers from Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky floated their produce down the Mississippi to southern markets but had to return home on the Trace before 1800. Politicians from the northeast seaboard states traveled south from Fort Pitt along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers but, to return home, they walked or rode the Trace like commoners. Andrew Jackson’s troops returned home to Tennessee along the Trace after their 1815 victory in "The Battle of New Orleans."

The Gordon House, a "stand" (inn) along the Natchez Trace.

In 1800, the Trace was declared a "post road" and riders on swift horses carried the mail from Nashville to Natchez in about three weeks. Improvements began to be made. Ferries were built at river fords. Inns, called "stands," were developed along the route, about a days journey apart. By 1820, there were twenty stands in operation. The hospitality they offered was simple – a meal of corn meal mush and milk and a place on the floor for the traveler to sleep. The cost was 25 cents per person per night!

John Coffee Memorial Bridge crosses Pickwick Lake formed by Pickwick Landing Dam on the Tennessee River

The steamboat changed life on the Natchez Trace. Traffic decreased steadily. Stands were closed or converted back to farms. By 1832, the Indian nations had been forcibly removed, west across the Mississippi. By the time of the Civil War, portions of the Trace had been reclaimed by the surrounding forest, and the road – and its history – was in danger of being lost.

Double arch bridge crossing Birdsong Hollow.

Early in the 1930's, the Mississippi Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution undertook the task of reviving the history of the Trace. Groups in Alabama and Tennessee, the other two states thru which the Trace passes, joined them. In 1937, ground was broken for a modern Parkway which would parallel the route of the original Trace. The following year, the National Park Service adopted it and added informational exhibits of historical and natural attractions along the way. In 2005, the 444 miles of Parkway were finally complete.

We took our time and drove the entire distance, north to south, stopping often to read the exhibits and explore some of the nature paths along the way.

Pharr Mounds: 8 burial mounds built 1800 to 2000 years ago.

Six locations of prehistoric Indian mounds speak silently of the ancient age of the trail. Boundary lines of Indian homelands and Indian names along the way declare the vigorous culture of brown-skinned people which long preceded the whites in that wilderness. Indian agencies and missions mutter of the conflict between the two cultures as whites moved southwest seeking land to settle.

Mount Locust was one of the first stands along the Old Trace in Mississippi.	Monument to Meriwether Lewis who died at a stand near this spot on the Old Trace.

Several small family cemetery plots and the site of an abandoned village testify to the difficulties of pioneer life.

Two restored "stands" exhibit the hardships of travel on the Trace. The grave of Meriwether Lewis attests to the dangers of travel along the route.

What a wonderful – and scenic – American history course! We’d recommend the Natchez Trace Parkway to anybody traveling in that part of the country.

We hope you enjoy – and learn – as much from it as we did!

mshr 9/21/2007
Photos © Bruce Rosenberger

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