Spring Travels: The Natchez Trace

The Old Natchez Trace, a forest trail that leads from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi connected the American interior to the Mississippi River and was of historic and vital route in the early days of the American frontier.  In fact, if you walk far enough back on the Old Trace, you will probably find it being used in 700 AD by prehistoric peoples, including the mound building tribes like the Natchez Indians.  Today, the Natchez Trace is maintained by the US Park Service along it 444 miles of idyllic two-lane, slow-paced travel through verdant woodlands.  

Traveling with the McCords in our 4Runner, we caught the Natchez Trace in Raymond, Mississippi about 75 north of Natchez, MS.  The idea was to cruise in our vehicle the now paved path that has been traveled by foot and horseback by the likes of Meriwether Lewis, Andrew Jackson, Spanish explores, French soldiers, pirates, frontiersmen, traders, scalawags, boatmen, all precede in previous millennia by the earliest of peoples on the North American continent.  We are walking in all of their footsteps, but instead of walking we are motoring at 50 mile per hour.  Our plan is to at any place of interest along The Trace and explore, ending up in the evening at The Routhland, a antebellum mansion B&B in Natchez.

Remnant of the Old Natchez Trace forest trail traveled by Indians, frontiersmen, Spanish, French and American explorers traders and soldiers.  Yes, they trod upon this very place on their way to the Mississippi River - just as we were doing.

The sign in the side of the road directed us toward a sidetrack where the actual pathway, worn into Mississippi soil from countless footsteps of travelers making there way to the Mississippi River.  This ground has seen the passing of members of a mound-building civilization (perhaps dating back to around 700 AD), Andrew Jackson to fight the British at New Orleans, Spanish explorers and French priests among thousand of others from the pages of history.  We stopped to walk the Trace ourselves.  Donna could not resist taking off her Trace-walking shoes and wading in the the small, clear creek beside the Trace.

Our traveling companion on the Old Trace, Donna McCord takes a trip through a brook
flowing beside the historic Natchez Trace. 

Sunlight through a springtime leaves along the Natchez Trac

 A little further down the Trace we come upon Rocky Springs ghost town.  A settlement boasting of 3 churches, artisans, stores and 25 square miles of farms tended by 2,000 slaves.  Rocky Springs thrived along the Natchez Trace from the 1780's into the early 20th Century, but a devastating infestation of boll weevils destroyed the economy and today all that is left is a Methodist Church and its graveyard, a few cisterns and several safes (long ago cracked open) rusting in the woods. 

Tree roots fight erosion at Rocky Springs ghost town

Spanish moss drapes from trees
surrounding an old Methodist Church

Rocky Springs Methodist meet still meet here on occasion.

Rocky Springs boneyard under spanish moss 

It is getting toward dusk and we need to check in to our B&B suite at the Routhland Mansion in Natchez before our hostess goes to her bridge party.  We leave the ghosts of Rocky Springs behind, but we are assured there will be more ghost awaiting us in Natchez as we scurry down the Trace like so many others before us.