Section of the original trace near Port Gibson, Mississippi  © NPS

Portions of the following are excerpted from the National Park Service Official Map and Guide, a colorful and thorough guide to the Trace, mile by mile. The Map and further information are available free from: Superintendent, 2680 Natchez Trace Parkway, Tupelo, MS 38801-9718; 601-680-4025 or 1-800-305-7417; or www.nps.gov/natr for the parkway and www.nps.gov/natt for the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail.

This is the story of people on the move, of the age-old need to get from one place to another. It is a story of Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indians following traditional ways of life, of French and Spanish people venturing into a world new to them, and of people building a new nation. At first the trace - or trail - was probably a series of hunter's paths that slowly came to form a trail running from the Mississippi over the low hills into the valley of the Tennessee. By 1733 the French knew the land well enough to map it and showed an Indian trail running from Natchez to the northeast. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, "Kaintucks," as the river merchants were called, would float down from the Ohio River Valley on flatboats loaded with their merchandise to be sold in New Orleans. Since there wasn't any practical way to return by river, the boats were dismantled and the lumber sold. The Natchez Trace would be the only pathway home. Growing numbers of travelers tramped the crude trail into a clearly marked path. By 1810 many years of improvements had made the trace an important wilderness road, the most heavily traveled in the Old Southwest. As the road was being improved other comforts, relatively speaking, were coming to the trace. By 1820 more than 20 stands were in operation. Most provided no more than shelter and plain food, although the stands at mount Locust and Red Bluff were substantial, well-known establishments. Even with these developments the trace was not free of discomforts and danger. Travelers waded through swamps and swam streams and fended off attacks by wild animals and poisonous snakes. It was also necessary to keep an eye open for murderous bandits and Indian attacks. The terrain of the trace was rough, too. A broken leg of a lone traveler would often mean certain death. The dangers of the route earned the Trace the nickname "Devil's Backbone." A new chapter in transportation dawned in January 1812 when the steamer New Orleans arrived in Natchez. Within a few years steamboats were calling regularly at St. Louis, Nashville, and Louisville. Travelers liked the speed and comparative safety of steamboat travel more than the slow pace of going overland. soon the bustle of the trace had quieted to the peacefulness of a forest lane.

Over a century later on February 15, 1934, Mississippi Congressman Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Busby introduced a bill that resulted in the act authorizing a survey of the Old Natchez Trace. This was a project to create much needed work and at the same time commemorate the early road. On May 21, 1934 The Seventy-Third Congress appropriated $50,000 to make the survey with the idea of constructing what was to become known as the "Natchez Trace Parkway." Four years later on May 18, 1938 the Parkway was authorized as a unit of the National Park System. Today more than 90 percent of its 444 mile total length is completed, giving present-day travelers an unhurried route from Natchez to Nashville. The parkway preserves important examples of our nation's natural and cultural heritage; significant and important sites such as plantations, inns, stands, pioneer and slave cemeteries, archeological sites, Emerald Mound - one of the largest ancient ceremonial mounds in the United States - and the burial place of Meriwether Lewis.

Today the "Old Trace" is paralleled by the modern Natchez Trace Parkway. Designated as part of the National Scenic Byways Program, the Natchez Trace Parkway was named by Transportation Secretary Federico Peña one of 6 All-American Roads in 1996 to commemorate its beauty, landscape features, and historic, cultural and intrinsic qualities.

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