We began our adventure along the Trace at the north end in Nashville, Tennessee on December 1st and 10 days later arrived in Natchez, Mississippi at the southern terminus.
It took that long to complete the 444 miles plus all the the numerous points of interest along the way and in a couple of nearby towns. And we still did not see everything along the way!
The Natchez Trace is an ancient trail that stretches from Natchez on the Mississippi River about 100 miles north of Baton Rouge, through northwest Alabama and across the Tennessee Valley to Nashville. Trace is the French word meaning animal track so essentially this was a natural travel corridor created by animals for migration and to get to water and salt licks. Ancient people of the Woodland (circa 1000 BCE) and Mississippian cultures (circa 800-1700 CE) traveled the paths to communicate and reach hunting grounds. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Natchez and other American Indian cultures flourished here prior to European contact and colonization.
Eventually, as the US expanded westward in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the Trace became the main north-south “highway” for travelers in what was known as the Old Southwest.
In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson designated the Trace a national post road for mail delivery between Nashville and Natchez. The cities of New Orleans and Natchez, about 500 miles south, were growing in Spanish and French territory. Both countries threatened to claim more territory in America and planted spies in areas that had contact with Americans. President Thomas Jefferson understood the importance of contact with those cities, as they controlled access to the Mississippi River. He negotiated a treaty with the American Indians to build a federal road from Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi along a series of existing trails between the Indian Nations. The Natchez Trace as a major national road was born, following some of the oldest trails in North America.
Postriders on horseback would carry mail in saddlebags along the Trace. A postrider from Nashville and one from Natchez would meet about half way, exchange mailbags, and head back. The trip was scheduled to take 14 days.
Though mostly used by working folks, the Trace was also traveled by famous Americans like General Andrew Jackson, Meriwether Lewis, John James Audubon, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses. S. Grant.
Growing numbers of travelers tramped the rough trail into a clearly marked path. Where the ground was relatively soft, walkers, riders, and wagons wore down the “sunken” sections you can still see today.
The Natchez Trace had little or no law enforcement, and travelers carrying money attracted ruthless highwaymen. These bandits hid in caves and coves along the route, robbing travelers at gunpoint and knifepoint. Some highwaymen learned to disguise themselves as gentlemen to win the trust of travelers before robbing them. The Natchez Trace earned the name “Devil’s Backbone.”
As the road was improved, stands (inns) provided lodging, food, and drink to Trace travelers. After General Andrew Jackson proposed the construction of a new road several miles east of the Trace in 1815, creating a shorter and improved military route between Nashville and Natchez, it caused a decline in the use of the Trace. Near the same time, the invention of the steamboat allowed boatmen to return home upstream against the current on the river rather than walk or ride up the Trace. Between 1820 and 1830, the original Trace lost significance as a national road but much of it continued to be used by local communities that had sprouted into small towns along the Trace.
Today, the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway is a National Scenic Byway that roughly follows the original network of trails from Natchez to Nashville. Although Franklin D. Roosevelt approved construction in 1938, the Natchez Trace Parkway as we know it was built over many years as federal funding became available. Finally completed in 2005, the route is preserved and operated by the National Park Service. The Parkway is traveled by cars, RV’s, and cyclists, and is a forest-fringed scenic road that commemorates the historical events that happened along the Trace and areas surrounding this once well-traveled route.
Over a period of 10 days, we drove along the entire stretch of this scenic tree-lined parkway, enjoying the view ahead, typically the only ones on the road, and certainly the only RV. We spent a couple of nights at four RV parks along the route: Thousand Trails Natchez Wilderness Preserve; Barnes Crossing in Tupelo; AmeriStar Casino in Vicksburg, and Riverview RV Resort in Vidalia across the Mississippi River from Natchez. During the day, map in hand, we returned to the Parkway in Jeep and stopped off at most of the points of interest, walked sections of the Old Trace, and hiked to the waterfalls.
We missed the fall display of leaves but it was still a pretty two-lane road, winding its way along through pretty countryside. Without leaves, we could see through the trees and, since the parkway is only 800 feet wide, it was surprising how many homes and farms were located on either side.
Here are the highlights of what we saw, in no particular order:
Meriwether Lewis Death and Burial Site
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| Pioneer Cemetery where Lewis is buried |
Back in 2005, after reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, we decided to explore the Lewis & Clark trail of the 1804 – 1806 Corps of Discovery’s exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. We only had time enough to tour the western half of the trail, from Fort Benton Montana to Fort Clatsop at the Oregon Coast. Our tour ended there, but the Lewis & Clark story continued, and then ended right here along the Trace.
After reaching the Oregon Coast, the Corps of Discovery expedition returned home in 1806, and Jefferson rewarded Lewis with the governorship of the Upper Louisiana Territory. As the presidency changed, so did politics. Several of the bills that Lewis submitted to the Department of War for payment were questioned, leaving Lewis personally liable for those bills. Lewis set out from St. Louis (the capital of the Upper Louisiana Territory) toward Washington to defend them.
Part of Lewis's route took him along a portion of the Natchez Trace. During the early morning of October 11th, 1809 while staying in Grinder's stand, Lewis died of gunshot wounds. The evidence that exists leads most historians to conclude that Lewis' wounds were self-inflicted, and many who knew Lewis believed he had committed suicide. Some accounts dated 1848 and later suggest that Lewis may have been murdered.
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| replica of Grinder's stand where Lewis was found |
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Meriwether Lewis was buried near Grinder's Stand along the Natchez Trace, and, in 1848, the State of Tennessee erected a memorial to honor him.
We visited the site, which includes a log cabin built in the style of cabins of that period, and the monument erected over Meriwether Lewis’s grave.
Stands along the Trace
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| Mount Locust |
Mount Locust remains as the only one of more than 50 inns that existed between 1785 and 1830 along the 500-mile Old Trace. A day's walk from Natchez brought Kaintucks and their gold to Mount Locust. Accommodation cost 25 cents and included a meal of corn mush and milk with sleeping arrangements on the porches and grounds.The house has been restored to its 1810 appearance, the time when travel on the Trace reached its peak.
Hernando de Soto
Indian Villages and Ceremonial Mounds
You can't explore the Trace without learning about the Indian cultures who were here thousands of years before Europeans discovered the continent, and the resulting impact of colonization. We stopped at an exhibit which preserves an original Chickasaw village that once stood here along the Trace. The Chickasaw people took advantage of the rich black soils of the region to plant corn, beans, and squash. Nearby springs and rivers provided a steady supply of dependable water. Numerous trails extending for hundreds of miles connected the villages. The Chickasaws still regard this area as their traditional ancestral home. They honor their life on this land by continuing practices that shaped daily life and Chickasaw culture over centuries.  |
| Bear Creek Mound |
When the Spanish Explorer Hernando de Soto passed through the southeastern quarter of North America in the 1540s, the Mississippian culture was powerful and numerous. Spanish horsemen documented riding up to the flat tops of the mounds. By 1600 nearly all the villages and ceremonial centers that de Soto and his men would have seen were abandoned. Mississippians were skillful farmers producing corn, beans, and squash to feed large populations. Their crops were supplemented with wild game, fish, roots, nuts and berries. They constructed homes of wood and reed, usually with clay-plastered walls and thatched roofs. Today, tribes of the Southeast include the Chickasaw nation, the Choctaw nation of Oklahoma, and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, all stemming from the Mississippian Culture.
More than a dozen mound groups are located within 25 miles of Emerald Mound. The mounds were used for burials, temples and ceremonial structures. Archaeologists believe the mounds were the setting for the elaborate civic processions, ceremonial dances, and intricate and solemn religious rituals.
Falls and Bluffs
We stopped at the Fall Hollow Trail, where a short walk over rocks and crackling leaves led to 2 waterfalls. Perhaps travelers stopped off at the falls to get water during their journey.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch at the Baker Bluff Overlook, 30 storeys above the Duck River. Across the valley from us was a conservation farm with content cream colored cows lowing every so often. It was a peaceful, serene, pastoral scene.
Next stop was Jackson Falls, named for Andrew Jackson, Tennessee’s first US president. A steep paved trail led us into the deep hollow carved out of limestone below the bluff.
We also walked along the more famous Sunken Trace, the preserved portion of the deeply eroded or "sunken" Old Trace. The information board at the site reminds us of the hardships the travelers endured along their journey. They dealt with heat, mosquitoes, poor food, hard beds, disease, swollen rivers and muddy swamps during the 500-mile walk. Not only did the travelers have to deal with discomforts but a broken leg or arm could spell death for a lone traveler. Driving the beautifully groomed parkway in Alpine and Jeep, I could only imagine what it must have been like walking that distance, let alone completing the journey several times like the Kaintucks.
Rocky Springs, a once thriving rural community, was first settled in late 1790’s. The town grew from a watering place along the Trace and took its name from the sources of that water: the Rocky Spring. In 1860, at the height of the community, there were 2,616 inhabitants in the 25 square mile area. The population of the town itself included 2 merchants, 4 physicians, 4 teachers, 3 clergy, 13 artisans, and in the surrounding cotton farming community were 54 planters, 28 overseers, and over 2,000 slaves .
We walked along a section of the Old Trace to the site of Rocky Springs. The nearby spring no longer flows, and today only the church, cemetery, two safes and a couple of cisterns remain to mark the area. Civil War, yellow fever (summer and fall of 1878), the boll weevil (early 1900’s), and poor land management brought an end to this once prosperous rural community. The last store in the area closed during the 1930s.
General U S Grant arrived at Rocky Springs on May 7, 1862 where he remained until May 10, allowing the XV Corps to cross the Mississippi and rejoin the army.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch at the Baker Bluff Overlook, 30 storeys above the Duck River. Across the valley from us was a conservation farm with content cream colored cows lowing every so often. It was a peaceful, serene, pastoral scene.
Next stop was Jackson Falls, named for Andrew Jackson, Tennessee’s first US president. A steep paved trail led us into the deep hollow carved out of limestone below the bluff.
Tobacco Farm and Old Trace Drive
Tobacco was grown here and we saw a typical early 1900s barn with tobacco leaves hanging to dry inside the barn.
Then we continued driving along a narrow 2-mile section of the original Old Trace before meeting up with the parkway again. The views across the valley were striking.
Old Trace sections and Sunken Trace
Like the travelers of yore, we walked along certain sections of the Old Trace trails.
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| Michael in the tramped down sunken trace |
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| so many travelers later, the ground here wore down to create this depression |
Rocky Springs
Rocky Springs, a once thriving rural community, was first settled in late 1790’s. The town grew from a watering place along the Trace and took its name from the sources of that water: the Rocky Spring. In 1860, at the height of the community, there were 2,616 inhabitants in the 25 square mile area. The population of the town itself included 2 merchants, 4 physicians, 4 teachers, 3 clergy, 13 artisans, and in the surrounding cotton farming community were 54 planters, 28 overseers, and over 2,000 slaves .We walked along a section of the Old Trace to the site of Rocky Springs. The nearby spring no longer flows, and today only the church, cemetery, two safes and a couple of cisterns remain to mark the area. Civil War, yellow fever (summer and fall of 1878), the boll weevil (early 1900’s), and poor land management brought an end to this once prosperous rural community. The last store in the area closed during the 1930s.
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| the iron safe and cistern are the only clues left to a previous thriving town along the Trace |
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| the Rocky Springs church still in use today |
Davy Crockett State Park and the Trail of Tears
On our current trip through Tennessee we were in the area where Crockett spent his early life. He was born in northeast Tennessee, not on a mountaintop, and we joined his life story at the point when he arrived in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee (a few miles east of the Trace) in 1817 at the age of 30, having survived the brutal Indian wars, and malaria, barely able to read and write, with his second wife and combined families of 6 children.
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| Crockett Falls |
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| original route of the Trail of Tears |
Elvis
Back in 2014 on our first Alpine trip we stopped in Memphis and visited Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion where he died and is buried, and the Sun Studios where he recorded his first records. On our current trip down the Natchez Trace we stopped in Tupelo Mississippi, about half way down the Trace, and the location of the Parkway Visitor Center. Tupelo is also where Elvis Presley was born and spent his first 13 years. We visited Elvis’s birthplace which includes the original, small, shot-gun 2-room home his family lived in, a church, and a museum.
A museum docent in the small house, a long-time Tupelo resident now in her 70's, was 3 years old when Elvis rose to fame. But her family knew and remembers well the Presleys who she said were good people and that his mother with whom he was very close "raised him right."
Elvis was born in 1935, an identical twin, but his twin was stillborn. He was born in the front room of the small 2-room house that had been built the year before by his father and uncle. The dimensions of the house are 15 feet by 30 feet. Our Alpine is 8 feet wide (side to side without slides) by 36 feet long! But at least it has a shower, toilet and washer on board. Elivs and his family had to use an outhouse and bathing was done in a tub set inside the kitchen and filled with hot water boiled on the stove.
Here is the reader board providing more information about privy use back then.
A few years later when his father defaulted on the $180 loan used for materials to build the house, it was repossessed, and the family had to move to other locations in Tupelo. The Presleys were poor and had constant money problems. The docent added that Elvis’s father Vernon was lazy and didn’t want to work too hard. Later he forged a $4 check, changing the amount to $40, and was sent to prison for 2 years. Elvis and his mother used to make the bus trip regularly to visit Vernon in prison.
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| the 2-room shotgun house where Elvis was born |
At age 11 Elvis’s mother took him to the hardware store to buy him a gift. Elvis really wanted a .22 caliber rifle, but his mother persuaded him to look at a guitar instead. The church pastor taught him how to play it. Elvis played the style of music he heard in his neighborhood, and a decade later many of his first songs recorded for Sun Records in Memphis were covers of earlier blues recordings by African Americans.
When Elvis was 13, continuing family money problems forced the Presleys to look for better opportunities in Memphis. The move put Elvis in the right place at the right time to make the recording at Sun Studios that launched his career as the “King of Rock ‘n Roll."
Coca-Cola Museum
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| the store where Coca-Cola was first bottled |
We also saw the equipment that Biedenharn used as part of his bottling enterprise.
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| Michael inspecting the soda fountain that dispensed the Coca-Cola |
Melrose
The antebellum estate of John T. McMurran, Melrose mansion is a part of the Natchez National Historical Park. The Historical Park was established by Congress to preserve and interpret the history of Natchez, Mississippi.
The Mississippi River brought success and prosperity to some and enslavement and despair to others. Melrose, considered to be the finest home in all the Natchez region, is an example of prosperity that plantation owners enjoyed.
McMurran, a Pennsylvaia-born Lawyer arrived in Natchez in the mid-1820’s, established a profitable Law practice, won election to the state legislature, married into a respected local family, and acquired the first of five plantations and slaves. In 1841 McMurran purchased 132 acres of land just outside Natchez. Over the next eight years, a combination of free and slave labor constructed the estate’s mansion and outbuildings. Finally, sometime before Februaruy 1849, the McMurrans and their two children moved into their new house.We didn’t see the inside except through a video in the visitor center. There are two brick buildings just outside the main house, one now the visitor center, the other a kitchen where the domestic slaves lived upstairs . The other slaves lived in another area of the grounds. Mc Murran started with 8 slaves and increased the number to 25, between 1841 and 1861. They tended the garden,the orchard, livestock, carriages, dog and poultry pens, and dirt road paths. In the years following the Civil War, the white owners of Melrose leased fields to newly freed African families to plant cotton. They became sharecroppers, returning some of the land at Melrose to commercial agricultural use.
Forks of the Road
A half century before the US legally abolished the importation of slaves directly from Africa in 1807, the northeastern colonies of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia were engaged in domestic trading of slaves. These colonies routinely transported enslaved persons to the southeastern colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia.
Internal enslavement trading existed roughly from the 1760s to the 1860s. By the 1790s with westward expansion, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia became the main exporters to the lower South. Within a few decades, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee were major slave exporters to the southwest.
After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and War of 1812, hordes of migrants, many with enslaved persons in tow, occupied the lower Mississippi Valley which was destined to soon become the cotton and sugar kingdom and empire.
Enslaved African descent people from the upper old south were forcefully brought to these regions by professional "slave traders" and speculators and sold in chattel human investment markets to meet an insatiable demand for slave labor. Early on, Natchez became one of two major southwest centers of America's long distance "domestic slave trade," the life blood of the southern slavery system.
From the 1830s to the Civil War, the Forks of the Road was reportedly America's second largest southwest enslavement marketplace. Between 1800 and 1860, more than 750,000 enslaved African-Americans were moved from the upper to the lower South, reflecting a shift in the agricultural economy of each region and the legal closing of the international slave trade after 1808. While migrating planters brought their own slaves, dealers brought many more through their interstate trading network. Purchasing surplus workers from plantations and at auctions in Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, these traders sent them in groups to the lower South for sale. As the information board above shows, "Sailing down the Atlantic coast across the Gulf to New Orleans and upriver to Natchez was very fast and cost about $20 per enslaved person." Traders purchased or leased land at the intersection or "fork" of Liberty Road and St. Catherine Street and set up compounds for housing, feeding, and displaying people for sale. These were showrooms where a buyer could purchase a person from those available that day. The last sale at the Forks happened in early 1863 just months before the US Army occupied Natchez, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in the area. Freed slaves flocked to town from the surrounding countryside, many settling here at the Forks near an encampment of black Union soldiers who may have used the buildings as barracks.
There is a monument to the slaves who came through this spot. It is a poignant reminder of the troubling times that led to enormous riches for both traders and plantation owners at the expense of human lives.
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| pieces of chains and shackles embedded in a blob of concrete on the grass lawn |
Natchez
We drove through downtown Natchez, which was all decked out for Christmas. |
| old downtown decked out for Xmas |
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| the mighty Mississippi |
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| bridge across the Mississippi River from Natchez, Mississippi to Vidalia, Louisiana |
The palque below is about Richard Wright, author of Black Boy, one of the books my high school students read. Wright was born on a cotton plantation near Natchez and spent his early childhood in town at the home of his grandparents.
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| Bontura |
There is one more aspect of American history that we experienced along our Natchez Trace adventure that is about the Civil War. We visited several sites and towns of major battles fought around Shilo, Corinth, Tupelo, and Vicksburg. There was a lot to see, absorb, and understand. That will be a separate post to provide a more complete account of this painful part of American history.
After Natchez, our Trace adventure was over. Except for a couple of days when a cold front blew in affecting the entire southwest and Gulf Coast, we had beautiful sunny days, warm enough to wear short sleeves.
In December!
While we were in Vicksburg, the temperatures dipped to a low of 28 at night, and during the day it hovered around the low to mid 50's. It was a shock to wake up to 2 inches of snow in the morning in Vicksburg!
And we saw the remains of the snow along the last stretch of the Trace. Everyone commented on how beautiful the Trace looked dusted in snow, a very rare occurrence in this area.
Before ending this blog entry, I want to share a bridge encounter we had the first day as we were approaching our turn-off to the Thousand Trails campground. Ginnie, our Garmin, instructed us to make a left turn onto the road. However, there was no left turn, only a right turn. We continued to a spot where we were able to turn around to return to the road and make our exit off the Parkway. And just as we turned the corner, I noticed the warning sign for a low bridge clearance, 11.0 FT.The Alpine, however, is 12 FT tall!
Michael pulled over to the side of a blind corner. I jumped out to see what was going on around the bend. Ahead of me to the left was the overpass of the Parkway which we would have to drive under to get to the other side. But in the opposite direction, there was a church with a large parking lot where we could turn around to make our way back to the Parkway. Michael however decided to follow Ginnie who showed a U-turn further along past the church lot. Except that what he didn't know is that it was a U-shaped narrow drive right through a small cemetery.
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| maneuvering the 12 ft Alpine off road under an 11 ft bridge |
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| phew! we just made it |