Natchez Trace Parkway I (2/16/2022)

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Today we started at the Forks of the Road, in Natchez, MS. This was the site of the second largest domestic slave market in the Deep South, which helped the city become an important port on the Mississippi River.

People of African descent were brought from the
"Upper" South and sold here from 1833-1863

Broken manacles in remembrance of tens of thousands
of enslaved men, women, and children

This mystery site was finally explained, it was the toll plaza
for the Natchez-Vidalia Mississippi River Bridge

It's hard to see the twin cantilever bridges (1940, and 1988)

Sign at the southern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway,
which essentially follows the Natchez Trace, a historic travel
corridor that grew from wild animal and indigenous people
trails, then used by European settlers, traders,postriders,
soldiers, circuit-riding preachers, slave traders, and the enslaved

The Natchez Trace Parkway (1938-2005) is 444 miles long

An exhibit shelter

Part of the original trace heads off into the woods

Emerald Mound is the second largest mound in North America

A mound on top of the mound; Emeral Mound was used
during the Mississippian period between 1250 and 1600 CE,
by the ancestors of the Natchez Nation (KSS)

A panorama across the top of Emeral Mound

The Parkway is a two-lane road with speed limits of
40 or 50 miles per hour

Mount Locust (c 1780, with additions) is one of the oldest
structures in Mississippi; it is the only surviving stand/inn
out of 50 that existed to provide a place to rest along the trace

In 1795 the Mississippi River was legally opened for American traffic. Settlers from the Ohio River Valley floated their products downriver to sell in Natchez or New Orleans. They also sold the wood of their rafts, and used "public transport to go home. However, between Natchez and Nashville, there was only the Natchez Trace, over 440 miles they had to manage on foot. These travelers were called Kaintucks.

The building stands on tree trunks!

Mount Locust was also a cotton plantation

A room at Mount Locust

This bed has an animal pelt (KSS)

The common dining area?

The owner's chamber

The Sunken Trace, part of the original trail (KSS)

Looking in the other direction on the Sunken Trace

Hardships along the trail included the heat, mosquitos, poor food, lack of beds, disease, swollen rivers, and sucking swamps.

Rocky Springs Methodist Church is the only building left
from the once prominent town of Rocky Springs

Church interior

Rocky Springs Cemetery; the Civil War, Yellow Fever, the
boll weevil, and poor land management led to the town's demise

Huh? I guess the foundation of the ginhouse for cotton
is covered with leaves

The only other thing left from the town are two safes
and two cisterns

Rocky Springs had a population of 2,616 in 1860, today 0

And the namesake Rocky Springs has dried up

Another section of the Old Trace

A detour to Jackson,, MS:

Mississippi State Capitol (1901-1903, by Theodore C Link
in Beaux-Arts style)

Residence (1925, by Wyatt C Hedrick in Tudor Revival style)
of author Eudora Welty, where she did all her writing in her
bedroom; she also tended the garden designed by her mother

Camellia sp

A peek toward the garden

Back on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Reservoir Overlook at the 50 square mile lake
formed by an earth-filled dam

Kent on the walkway over Cypress Swamp

Cypress Swamp knees

Bald Cypress reflections

View west from Little Mountain in Jeff Busby Park

View east from Little Mountain at the highest elevation
(603 feet) along the Natchez Trace Parkway

Deciduous trees join the tall pines along the parkway

Bynum Mounds of the Middle Woodland period (1000 BCE
to 1000 CE) where the trails used for trade were
the forerunners of the Natchez Trace

We arrived in Tupelo, MS, the first TVA
(Tennessee Valley Authority) city, being
the first city to purchase hydroelectric power
in 1934; the sign is from the 1950s

Next: Elvis Birthplace.