Natchez Trace

Before Christ was born, deer and buffalo migrating and looking for food and water made trails in the 'Old Southwest', Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. By 100 BC, these trails became Indian trails for the Natchez, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes. Then the Spanish, French, and English used them and eventually early US settlers consolidated these trails into 'The Trace' extending from Natchez, Mississippi, on the Mississippi River, north across the state of Mississippi, crossing Alabama, and into Tennessee ending at Nashville.

In the early 1800's, farmers in the Ohio River Valley loaded their crops onto home made riverboats and floated down the Mississippi to Natchez or New Orleans, where they sold their crops and their boat, then returned home on foot or horseback following "Natchez Trace" from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee.




This trail was made a National Park in 1938 . . . a 444 mile long National Park named 'Natchez Trace Parkway'. Today we went North from Red Bay, Alabama, and connected with the parkway, which we then followed South to Tupelo, Mississippi . . . a distance of about 50 miles.

The Parkway is a non-commercial, two-lane blacktop road winding through the countryside . . . a very peaceful, pretty drive with very little traffic. There are no signs, other than an occasional National Park Service information signs . . . you know, the brown ones.





As you can imagine, there are many historic stops along the 444 miles of Parkway, and we visited several in the 50 or so miles we traveled. At one stop, we saw Indian Burial Mounds, eight of them spread over 90 acres. Around 1-200 AD, a nomadic tribe of Indians returned to this area periodically to bury their dead. You can see three of the mounds in the distance in the photo at the right.







When settlers traveled "Natchez Trace", they had to contend with wild animals, unfriendly Indians, and bandits, as well as the weather and terrain. One traveler wrote about the area shown in the photo at right, called 'Twentymile Bottom', "I have this day rode my horse five miles, bridged one creek, forded several others, besides the swamp we had to wade through. At night we had a shower of rain -- and I took up my usual lodging on the ground in company with several Indians."







The woodlands along "Natchez Trace" is full of Dogwood trees . . . they are in bloom and scattered throughout the area. We stopped at one spot called Dogwood Valley. The trees were beautiful.











Another historic stop was at the location of an Indian village. Their buildings were gone, but the foundations were marked . . . a summer house and a winter house as well as a stockade, which they used to shield themselves from the attacks of other tribes. They apparently learned to build stockades from the white settlers.









After about 50 miles of history, we left "Natchez Trace" at Tupelo, Mississippi, where we stopped to see the birthplace of Elvis, then went to a Chili's restaurant for an exciting 'Easter Dinner'. Then it was back to "The Bus" in Red Bay, Alabama, to await repairs.