The Road to Texas--The Natchez Trace

The Modern Natchez Trace parkway as it appears on a warm day in October.

     In the 1820’s and 30’s, when hundreds of American families were migrating to Texas to take advantage of the liberal colonization policies offered by Mexico, there were few roads in that direction.  Dense forests, sparse population, swamps, and hostile Indians surrounded Texas and made it very difficult to simply go there. 

     Nashville, Tennessee, was accessible and from there, the Natchez Trace offered a convenient, relatively safe wagon route to Natchez on the Mississippi River.  Once in Natchez, the travelers could choose to float down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and then take a ship to Galveston, Velasco, or Indianola, ports on the Texas Coast.  A slower, but less expensive choice from Natchez was to go cross-country to Natchitoches, Louisiana, then overland and enter Texas at the sister city of Nacogdoches.  Both these routes grew popular and well travelled, and early Texans knew them well.

     I cannot remember when I became aware of the Natchez Trace, but I first saw one end of it in 1973 at the Belle Meade Plantation on West End Boulevard in Nashville.  I knew it had been a main route for immigrants from the Ohio River Valley.  They hung out the “Gone to Texas” signs and headed west to pledge allegiance to Mexico, join the Catholic Church, and claim their near-free homestead land.   I didn’t know the Trace (as some trails were called in those days) started in Nashville.    

     James Michener wrote about a twelve-year-old boy walking to Texas from Baltimore on the Natchez Trace, so I believed for many years the Trace started in Baltimore.  I should have paid more attention.  In 1801, Thomas Jefferson, perhaps anticipating the Louisiana Purchase, sent the U.S. Army to clear a mail route from Nashville to the Mississippi River.   Jefferson wanted a reliable road to the “southwest.”  The army simply widened, marked, and improved ancient Indian trails that led to Natchez, Mississippi.  By 1809, the entire route was wide enough to accommodate wagon traffic in either direction.

      The Trace starts in Nashville, Tennessee, clips off the northwest corner of Alabama, heads diagonally across Mississippi and terminates in Natchez, a distance of just under 450 miles.  It follows the high ground in the forest between the rivers on a ridgeline trail that was used by Native Americans for hundreds of years.

A map of the original Natchez Trace.  The current Parkway skirts the cities.

     “Kaintucks,” the name given a rough, semi-civilized group of backwoods farmers in Kentucky and Ohio, used the Trace to get back home after delivering their crops and livestock to market in Mississippi.  These enterprising men built river barges, loaded their stock and produce, and floated down-river to willing buyers waiting in Natchez.  Because the barges would not float upstream, the Kaintucks either sold or traded them for wagons.  The more industrious dismantled the barges and sold the lumber.

      The Kaintucks, flush with cash, made their way back home overland on the Natchez Trace.  By 1810, over 10,000 Kaintucks made this journey, along with hundreds of pilgrims heading west.   Dozens of inns and hostels (called “stands”) sprang up along the Trace.  Highwaymen, thieves and cutthroats camped in the adjacent woods and preyed on weak or unwary travelers.

     Merchants, plantation owners, and genteel society members of Natchez built mansions on the hills above the river, but the docks and warehouses were located in what was known as “Natchez Under the Hill.”  In this wicked underbelly of the city, a hotbed of saloons, dance halls, whorehouses, and gambling dens competed for the opportunity to fleece the unsophisticated farmers carrying in their moneybelts the proceeds from a year’s work.  Then, as now, these “victimless” crimes were mostly ignored and lawless activity flourished “under the hill.”

     The Natchez Trace enjoyed a colorful, but relatively brief, existence.  In 1820, then-General Andrew Jackson completed the Jackson Military Road from Nashville to New Orleans.  The new road was east of the Trace, through the Alabama swamps and about two hundred miles shorter than going by way of Natchez.  West of the Trace, steam-powered riverboats began to ply the Mississippi and Memphis became the center of commerce upriver from New Orleans.  Traffic began to fade on the Trace.  The Kaintucks preferred the river route home, and, after the 1830s, most colonists headed west by different routes.

     The Trace is memorialized by a paved, two-lane road that parallels the original trail and is called the Natchez Trace Parkway.   Established by the National Park Service in 1938, construction on the Parkway was completed in 2005.  The speed limit is fifty miles per hour, commercial vehicles or trucks are not allowed, and frequent rests stops and historical markers abound.  Gas stations, convenience stores, and commercial activity, including signs, are banned from the parkway. 

     I first rode the parkway in 1996, on a motorcycle trip with three friends.  We visited the Vicksburg Battleground early one morning, then rode east and picked up the Trace about twenty miles west of Jackson.  We rode northeast about 200 miles and dropped off at Tupelo, on our way to barbeque and blues on Beale Street in Memphis.  

      We had travelled across two states and over 600 miles on public highways and freeways, buffeted by windy backwash from eighteen wheelers every mile of the way.  We searched among the billboards on either side of the road for the next exit sign, where we could get gas or take a leak.  We often were forced to ride, white-knuckled, over ninety miles-an-hour just to get past a truck and out of the turbulence the big semis create.  We filled our lungs with diesel and gasoline fumes, dodged unaware drivers as they changed lanes indiscriminately, and concentrated on the road ahead for loose pieces of debris that will wreck a motorcycle.  I can tell you, the joy and freedom of motorcycle touring does not come easy.

     By contrast, with my motorcycle at fifty miles-per-hour on the Natchez Trace Parkway, I could hear the birds singing and I could smell the flowers. Pristine lakes dot the countryside, and thick green forests crowd the roadway.  Lush manicured grass grows next to the pavement and no weed dares raise its ugly head.  Frequent rest areas with picnic tables break up the ride, and spotlessly clean restrooms are strategically placed to ensure comfort.  All points of interest are well-marked with uniform National Park Service signs, each clear, concise, and fresh-painted.  If there is a downside, the route is almost too sanitary.

     In 2008, my wife and I drove the Natchez Trace Parkway, from its inception on West End Boulevard in Nashville to its terminus at the Mississippi River in Natchez.  We stayed in one of the magnificent plantation homes on the hill above the river, and had dinner at a white tablecloth restaurant in a trendy section of town called “Under the Hill.”  Everything about the experience, from the bright-eyed little cutie who served us to the “Kaintuck Strip” sirloin we ate, was entirely pleasant.

     I am not the first in my family to travel the Natchez Trace. In 1828, my great-great grandfather, James McLaughlin, left Nashville and headed for Texas.  I cannot help but wonder, after over a month on the Trace, if he paused to relax “Under the Hill” in Natchez.   If so, could he have been served by our little cutie’s bright-eyed great, great grandmother?

A view of the original Trace, cut through the woods by countless wagon wheels and horse's hooves.