Natchez Trace Parkway

The Natchez Trace Parkway starts just north of downtown and runs 444 miles through Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee to Nashville. The National Park Service manages it as a scenic corridor — no commercial traffic, 50 mph limit, frequent pull-offs at historic sites and natural areas — making it one of the most pleasant long-distance drives in the South.

You do not need to drive the whole thing to appreciate it: even the first 20 or 30 miles north of Natchez pass through some of the parkway's most historic stretches, including Emerald Mound (second-largest pre-Columbian earthwork in North America) and various sections of the original trace. The visitor centre near the Natchez end has good maps and exhibits on the trace's history.

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The Natchez Trace follows a path worn by bison first, then Native Americans, then flatboat men who floated their goods downriver to Natchez and then had to walk 500 miles back to Tennessee — there was no upstream river travel before the steamboat era. The road was at its busiest in the 1800s and gradually fell out of use as river transport improved.

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