Summer Travel Special Relive the past on a drive down Natchez Trace Parkway. By Michael Sims
W
e were headed south out of Nashville by the time the sun crept over the horizon. Because we were driving the Natchez Trace Parkway from south-central Tennessee to southern Mississippi, we had a carload of binoculars and maps, notebooks and cameras. Our route would later cross paths with the fabled Blues Highway—the environs of U. S. 61—so we were playing Otis Spann’s version of “The Blues Don’t Love Nobody.” I traveled with Denny Adcock, a Nashville-based photographer and former curator at the Country Music Hall of Fame, who provided background information about the Trace, as well as how the blues grew out of the troubled history of this region. You can comfortably tour archaeological sites along the Trace in three or four days. The Parkway roughly parallels the original Natchez Trace, which began as the ancient path of large game and the various native groups who hunted them. Bison and deer originally wore the path by following a natural ridgeline southward, establishing a route between the lush grazing of the Mississippi Delta and the salt licks of the Tennessee central basin. Humans then established trade routes along the game trails. Later, the Trace became the route of the “Kaintuck” migrants. These Ohio River Valley farmers and merchants
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flat-boated their goods down the Mississippi, sold them in Natchez, tore down the boats and sold them for lumber, and walked or rode back up the Trace with gold in their pockets—unless they had the misfortune of encountering the ruthless bandits who worked this area. The Trace has seen Choctaw and Natchez and Chickasaw, settlers from Spain and France and England, Civil War battles at nearby Vicksburg and Shiloh, and countless slaves from Africa and the Caribbean. Nowadays it winds near giant burial mounds, early settlers’ inns, and the modest birthplace of Elvis Presley. The northern terminus of the Parkway is south of Nashville, in Williamson County—supposedly the birthplace of the notorious Natchez Trace bandit John Murrell. The Tennessee leg of the Parkway offers fewer historical sites than the Mississippi leg, so you can start out simply enjoying the drive through rolling hills. Gradually the archaeological and historical sites increase until they culminate in the Trace’s point of origin at Natchez. You can walk along sections of the original Trace at various places. Maintained by the National Park Service and designated a National Scenic Byway, the Parkway winds across parts of three states, 444 miles long but at times only a few hundred yards wide. It was under construction from 1937 to 2005.
summer • 2009
Natchez Trace Compact
Many archaeological sites can be seen while driving the 444-mile long Natchez Trace Parkway.
