A Very Relaxing Drive

The Natchez Trace Parkway runs 444 miles from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. The entire route is a National Park. Since we were going to be in Nashville I planned this next stop so we could travel the Parkway. We entered the Parkway about 30 miles from its northern terminus and took it for a bit over 120 miles.

The whole route is like this. It’s a two lane road, no shoulders, just a grassy verge. The speed limit is 50 mph. But there are no stop signs or traffic lights, no trucks (no commercial traffic), no billboards and very little traffic. You just cruise along through the trees.

There are some open areas…

but the majority is tree lined. The route follows an Indian trail that the United States gained a right of way for in treaties with the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations in 1801. European boatmen walked north along the route after floating goods down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. They would sell their goods in Natchez, including the timbers that made the flatboats they came down river on. Then they would walk the Natchez Trace back to Nashville and on to their homes.

There are plenty of places to pull over along the way and we stopped three times. The first time was right after we got on, at mile marker 412, the Water Valley Scenic Overlook. The scene was a bit marred by the power line running through, but it still made a pleasant stop.

Our second stop was at the Meriwether Lewis Burial Monument at mile marker 386. After his great expedition with Clark, Meriwether Lewis was appointed Governor of the Territory of Louisiana.

In the fall of 1809 he was journeying north on the Natchez Trace with Major James Neely, the U.S. Agent for the Chickasaw Nation. This is a portion of the original trail still visible at the site of the monument.

On October 11, 1809, they stopped for the night at the Grinder House, one of many Stands that offered accommodations to walkers along the trail. That night shots were fired and Lewis died. It is still debated whether this was suicide or murder. Lewis was in money trouble and known to drink and take drugs. His trip was to clear up claims to get reimbursements withheld from his expedition with Clark and to deliver his journals to a publisher in Boston. Perhaps he despaired of ever getting his money from these things. Perhaps he suffered, as has been suggested, from depression and PTSD. Perhaps he was one of the many victims of highwaymen along the Trace.

In any case, his body was buried in an unmarked grave in a pioneer cemetery next to the Grinder House. A year later a friend put an iron fence around the grave and in 1848 Tennessee erected his monument.

Today the grave, ruins and monument are part of the Natchez Trace National Parkway.

Our final stop was at the Tenn-Tom Waterway at mile marker 293. This was actually about a half mile past where we were supposed to turn off.

The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway joins the Tennessee River to the Tombigbee River creating an alternate route for barges and boats between the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. Since its completion in 1985 this has been the preferred route for pleasure boats as the lower Mississippi has so much commercial traffic and few accommodations for smaller boats.

The Natchez Trace Parkway crosses the Tenn-Tom on the Jamie R. Whitten Bridge. Jamie Whitten was a congressman who fought for funding to link the two rivers, something that had been discussed for more than a century. As the sign there said “His vision helped make possible this historic landmark, the intersection of two great avenues of transportation-one past, one present, and both for the future.”

We turned back to County Road One and went 20 miles along the Tenn-Tom to our new campground, but I have another 80 mile stretch of the Natchez Parkway planned for later in the year. It’s a great road for touring.