The natural travel corridor that became the Natchez Trace dates back thousands of years bisecting the traditional homelands of the Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations. Now honored as a designed landscape, the Natchez Trace is the only National Parkway to commemorate an ancient travel route. As the United States extended westward in the late 1700s and early 1800s, travelers tramped the rough trail into a clearly marked path. Where the ground was relatively soft, walkers, riders, and wagons wore down the "sunken" sections you see today. In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson designated the Trace a national post road for mail delivery between Nashville and Natchez.

The modern Parkway stretches 444 miles and takes more than 11 hours to drive from end to end. It passes through three states, 25 counties, and 20 communities. The Parkway corridor includes 52,000 acres of scenic, natural, cultural, and historic resources representing a variety of southern landscapes—forests, wetlands, prairies, rivers, pastures, and croplands and is habitat for nearly 1,500 species of plants, 33 mammal species, 134 bird species, and 70 species of reptiles and amphibians.

Link to the Natchez Trace Parkway

Featured in this display:

Photographs

Scrapbook containing newspaper clippings: "Completion of Natchez Trace Parkway Hinges on 55 Million Dollars" (Clarion-Ledger, 25 August 1968); "Natchez Trace Parkway Called Tourist Bonanza For State" (Daily News, 27 October 1964); "Watch Out For Deer On Natchez Trace" (undated)

Illustrated map (Published by Deep South Specialties, Inc.)

Press Book for the film "Natchez Trace" (1960)

Brochure. Guide to Points of Interest Along and Near the Natchez Trace National Parkway