Natchez Trace Parkway
Park History
Sourced
The Natchez Trace Parkway runs 444 miles through Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, from the bluffs of the lower Mississippi River at Natchez to the Appalachian foothills near Nashville, along a corridor whose human use the Park Service dates to 8000 BCE. It began, the 2014 foundation document says, as animal trails, and became a human route because it followed high ground and easily passable topography; 180 segments of the original route survive, some worn into a sunken profile where foot, horse and wagon traffic cut into erodible loess soil. The corridor crosses the homelands of the Natchez, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, links more than 350 archeological sites and 22 burial and ceremonial mounds, and protects more than 2,600 species across seven ecoregions. [1] [2]
By 1785 the Trace was a route for boatmen who floated down the Mississippi to sell their goods in Natchez and New Orleans. President Thomas Jefferson designated it a national post road in 1801, Meriwether Lewis died on it in 1809, and General Andrew Jackson moved militia and regular troops along it during the War of 1812. Stands, or inns, provided lodging, food and drink to travelers. Congress created the parkway in 1938 to commemorate the route; it took from a groundbreaking on September 16, 1937, to May 21, 2005, to finish. [1] [2] [3]
One of the foundation document’s interpretive themes, “Homelands in Transition,” holds that generations of American Indian occupation came to an end as Americans migrated westward; four sections of the Trail of Tears and parts of the Choctaw and Chickasaw removal routes cross the parkway. The document also records that interpretation had not focused on the message that mound sites are sacred, and that climate models predict heavier rainfall that could accelerate erosion and expose buried cultural resources along the corridor. [1]
Indigenous peoples
A 1994 National Register nomination describes the Trace as interlocking Native paths running from the Cumberland settlements to the Chickasaw villages, on to the Choctaw towns, and from there to the villages of the Natchez on the Mississippi. Emerald Mound, an eight-acre ceremonial mound built between 1200 and 1730, is the nation’s second-largest, according to the foundation document. [4] [2] [1]
At milepost 397.4 the Old Trace marks the boundary of Chickasaw lands ceded to the United States in 1805 and 1816. In 1811 Choctaw agent Silas Dinsmoor moved his agency to a site beside the road; travelers passing through the Choctaw Nation had to display a pass to him. In the 1820 Treaty of Doaks Stand the Choctaws gave up six million acres and agreed to move west; it took another ten years and a second treaty before they went. More than 20 tribes have an ancestral connection to the Trace and hold its mounds as sacred ground. [2] [4] [1]
Women
Elizabeth Female Academy, at Washington, Mississippi, six miles east of Natchez, was chartered on February 17, 1818, on grounds that Elizabeth Roach donated to the Methodist Mississippi Conference, and opened on November 12 that year. Bishop Charles Galloway, writing in 1899, called it the first chartered institution for the higher education of young women in the South, if not in the United States; the park brochure calls it the first school for women chartered by Mississippi. It did collegiate work and conferred degrees, took 28 to 63 boarders a year between 1819 and 1829, and counted John James Audubon on its faculty. The capital’s move to Jackson, yellow fever epidemics and other causes forced it to suspend operation in 1845; by 1974 one brick wall stood. [5] [2]
Up the road at Mount Locust, family tradition holds that Paulina Ferguson divorced James Chamberlain in 1816 and ran the house as a stand until around 1842. [6]
Slavery
Mount Locust, at milepost 15.5, was a cotton plantation as well as a stand; the Park Service’s 2022 draft landscape inventory states that it ran on enslaved labor until after the Civil War. It counts 26 enslaved workers in Paulina Ferguson’s household in the 1820 census, 42 in 1830, and 53 in her 1849 estate appraisal, divided among her three surviving children. The 1860 Jefferson County slave census shows T. Chamberlain with 72 enslaved workers and 16 enslaved houses. Mount Locust’s slave dwellings have not been found; 1998 archeology mapped 42 regularly shaped depressions in their cemetery, on a wooded ridge northwest of the house; burials appear arranged by families. [6]
In late 1811 Andrew Jackson, travelling to Natchez to obtain enslaved people, refused to show his pass at the Choctaw Agency and armed several of the enslaved people with him; agent Dinsmoor, himself an enslaver on the agency land, armed Indians and whites. No blood was shed. [4]
Sources
- Foundation Document, Natchez Trace Parkway, Mississippi-Alabama-Tennessee (NPS, October 2014)
- NPSHistory.com: Natchez Trace Parkway archive page — overview and milepost guide (from the NPS brochure) and establishment block
- Davis, “The Road Is a Park, and the Park Is a Road,” Public Roads 80(3), Nov/Dec 2016 (Federal Highway Administration)
- Brown, National Register nomination: Old Natchez Trace and Choctaw Agency Site (NPS Southeast Regional Office, 1994)
- Cox, National Register nomination: Elizabeth Female Academy (No. 101-3X) (NPS, 1974)
- Cultural Landscapes Inventory: Mount Locust, Natchez Trace Parkway (NPS, 5/20/2022 draft)
Removed Per Nps Court Filing: Exhibit panels
Natchez Trace Parkway stands as one of America's most significant historic travel routes. The events that unfolded here shaped the nation's future — and the interpretive materials that tell this story have been developed over decades by historians and park staff committed to factual accuracy.
From the internal review records: “Panel of "Civil War" does not address the purpose or importance of the photographed soldier nor the USCT as a whole, which is disparaging to those who fought. Additionally, a black soldier is placed in front of a Confederate battle flag.”
Why this matters: Natchez Trace Parkway commemorates events that shaped the course of American history. The interpretation here has been developed by professional historians over decades and reflects scholarly consensus. For the thousands of students who visit each year, this is often their first direct encounter with the realities of the Civil War — including its root cause in slavery.
- “Waysides” — removed per NPS court filing
- Exhibit panels
- Wayside
- Wayside/sign
- Waysides
- Site bulletin
- Waysides; reason: Disparages Americans past or living; out of conformance with EO 14172; now: At the park
- Exhibit panels; reason: Revisions made for reasons outside of the scope of SO 3431; out of conformance with EO 14172; now: Discarded
- Wayside; reason: Revisions made for reasons outside of the scope of SO 3431; out of conformance with EO 14172; now: Discarded
- Wayside/sign; reason: Revisions made for reasons outside of the scope of SO 3431; out of conformance with EO 14172; now: Discarded
- Waysides; reason: Revisions made for reasons outside of the scope of SO 3431; out of conformance with EO 14172 and poor condition; now: Discarded
- Site bulletin; reason: Revisions made for reasons outside of the scope of SO 3431; out of conformance with EO 14172; now: Discarded
Panel of “Civil War” does not address the purpose or importance of the photographed soldier nor the USCT as a whole, which is disparaging to those who fought. Additionally, a black soldier is placed in front of a Confederate battle flag.
Photographs attached to this park's records in the leaked NPS review database.
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