Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThis
Points 3-5
3. Mt. LocustThroughout its long history the Natchez Trace has shown the way for an incredible caravan of travelers: trappers and traders, pioneers and preachers, soldiers and scoundrels. But of all those who have trodden here, the group that is perhaps most identified with the trace are the riverboat men who, starting in the late 18th century, began a regular trading routine with cities on the lower Mississippi.
Known as Kaintucks (though they came from many states besides Kentucky), these rough-and-ready entrepreneurs guided their flatboats and rafts down the Mississippi to deliver goods at Natchez or New Orleans. Once their business had been completed, they sold their boats for lumber and trekked home on foot rather than push upstream against the current. Darkened by the sun and often dressed in tatters, they had, according to one observer, "beards eighteen days old, adding to the singularity of their appearance, which was altogether savage."
By 1810 as many as 10,000 Kaintucks a year were trudging northward toward Nashville on the trace. Before long, such heavy traffic had turned a crude, narrow wilderness trail into a clearly defined route. (In 1806 the trace was broadened to 12 feet by order of Thomas Jefferson to make it passable for wagons.) To serve the boatless boatmen who faced a long journey home, a series of inns, called stands, sprang up along the route, spaced about one day's walk apart. Of the 50 original stands, only Mt. Locust remains. Restored to its 1820 appearance, the simple wooden house is built on pilings to keep the interior cool during summer; the design also features a long front gallery, or porch. Most of these primitive shelters provided little more than a plate of cornmeal mush and a spot to sleep on a wooden floor, but to weary travelers making their way on a journey of nearly 500 miles, they must have seemed as inviting as any posh New Orleans hotel.
4. Windsor Ruins
A turn west off the parkway onto Rte. 552 leads along a quiet back-country road to Windsor Ruins, the haunting skeleton of what was once the largest and most impressive antebellum home in Mississippi. Completed in 1861 at the then-staggering cost of $175,000, Windsor served as an observation post for Confederate troops and, later, as a hospital for the Union Army. Ironically, the building survived the Civil War intact, only to be destroyed in 1890 by a fire ignited by a careless smoker. Today, all that remains of the once-magnificent mansion is 23 weathered Corinthian columns, their ornate iron capitals touching nothing but the deep blue southern sky.
5. Port Gibson
From Windsor Ruins the drive curves northeastward to rejoin the parkway, via Rte. 18, near milepost 40. Just before the junction, you pass through historic Port Gibson, the town General Ulysses S. Grant reportedly decreed was "too beautiful to burn" during his march to Vicksburg in 1863. Among the antebellum structures that inspired his benevolence are Oak Square, a 30-room Greek Revival mansion (now a bed-and-breakfast inn) and the 1859 First Presbyterian Church. Its soaring steeple is topped with a gilded 10-foot-tall metal hand pointing skyward, and its interior features chandeliers from the Robert E. Lee, one of the most majestic steamboats ever to ply the Mississippi. The dawn of the steamboat era, around 1812, marked the beginning of the end for the Natchez Trace: river travel was so much easier and safer than the overland journey that, by the 1820s, the pathway was virtually abandoned and forgotten. Not until the early 20th century were efforts made to locate and mark the historic route.
Advertisement 
feeds instead
