TRAVEL AWAITS: Must-See Sites Along The Natchez Trace Parkway

                         

The complete article was published in Travel Awaits in July 2020

We loved our drive through the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina the previous year, so we decided to do the only other parkway in the U.S.: the Natchez Trace Parkway. It winds among the low hills south of Nashville, then there is a small section that crosses Alabama’s northwestern tip before ending in  Mississippi.

The Parkway became obsolete when improved transportation infrastructure — steamboats, stagecoach lines, and railroads — and ports developed along nearby rivers. As a result, no major population centers grew along the parkway. Today, it is "almost completely unspoiled, a quiet forest lane with the look and feel of the past, especially in its sections in Tennessee and Alabama."

"We saw many hiking trails, clear streams, little falls, shallow swamps, gentle meadows, pretty trees, and wild turkeys. We even chanced upon a gravesite of 13 unknown Confederate soldiers. At Donivan Slough, I was fascinated by the cotton fields that almost looked like acres of pock-marked snow. It was my first time seeing those fields where many slaves and their descendants toiled. Then there were the Native American burial mounds, even bigger and higher (though not in special shapes) than the ones we saw at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. Here are some of the significant stops we made."

1. Natchez Trace Wilderness Preserve in Hohenwald, Tennessee

We camped here, an 830-acre forested campground. A true wooded oasis, there was a three-mile-long lake with excellent fishing. It is just a little over an hour from the northern terminus of the Parkway, a perfect base for exploring the northern half, an hour and a half from Nashville.

2. Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge near Milepost 444 (please see headline photo)

The northern terminus in Franklin, Tennessee is the concrete double-arched Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge. "At 145 feet high, it commands the intersection of the Parkway and State Route 96 at Birdsong Hollow. At 1,572 feet long and 37 feet wide, it was the first segmentally constructed concrete arch bridge in the U.S...This is called a cathedral arch bridge, and the weight is concentrated at the crown of the arch, giving the bridge a clean appearance.

3. James Polk Home near Milepost 416

Columbia, Tennessee is just an hour from this milepost. It is where the simple home of James Polk, 11th president of the U.S., is located. "Polk only served for one term and died just three months after leaving office. He won the Mexican-American War for the Union, and his legacy became the annexation of the rest of the West after the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He was sickly from the start, but, being a workaholic, it is believed that the hard work he put in may have cost him his life. At the home/museum, you will find two photos next to each other, one taken just before he died, showing how he had changed in only a year."

4. Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee

"It was just an hour more after Columbia, Tennessee, so we also visited the Jack Daniel Distillery in the town of Lynchburg. It produces the top-selling American whiskey in the world in Moore County, a dry county. Thus, the liquor they produce cannot be sold nor consumed there. Quite ironic. The company now has over 500 employees in a town with a population of 6,000 and produces 16 million cases, or over 31 million gallons, of bourbon for domestic use and export annually.

5. Old Trace Drive at Milepost 397.4 (In Tennessee)

"The Old Trace was established in 1801, while the parkway began in 1930. Old Trace Drive commemorates the original route following the “traces” of bison and other game. In essence, it was the original path of the earliest Americans on the move. Parts of the Old Trace are still preserved, letting the travelers of today feel how it was to traverse the road in the 1800s. In addition, it was our tremendous luck that we were there during fall because the colors were spectacular."

6. Meriweather Lewis Monument at Milepost 385.9

Very near where we were camped in the town of Hohenwald, this is where, at the age of 55,  Meriwether Lewis died under very mysterious circumstances. "Syphilis, suicide, and even murder were suspected. Together with William Clark, he headed the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the three-year (1803 to 1806), 8,000-mile exploration which resulted in the doubling of the size of the U.S. with the Louisiana Purchase. The monument is incomplete and stands above Lewis’s burial site, near the roadhouse where he died. It symbolizes a life that was cut short, a life that could have been so much greater, given what he had accomplished in his years."

7. Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama

Ivy Green, Helen Keller’s birthplace and childhood home in Tuscumbia, Alabama was a two-hour diversion from the Natchez Trace Parkway but I wanted to see the home of the major inspiration in the life of my mother, a teacher of the deaf. "Despite being rendered blind and deaf from a high fever at the early age of 19 months, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliff, now part of Harvard University, cum laude thanks in part to the dedication of her beloved teacher Anne Sullivan. She even went on to write 14 books and was a sought-after inspirational speaker until she died at the age of 88."

 8. Elvis Presley Birthplace near Milepost 259.7

We also went to the Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, just 45 minutes from this milepost. "Having been to Graceland the previous year when we visited Memphis, it was a great opportunity to see his home from the time he was born to the time he headed for Memphis and stardom. Gospel singing influenced Elvis’s music so much that the church which he attended as a boy and teenager was relocated to the site of his very humble home, one block from its original location."

"Had we gone farther south, we would have also seen — aside from the bustling city of Jackson — the Windsor Ruins, the patches of red clover, and yellow wildflowers on the river bend." 

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