AT | PCT | FT | IAT | NTT | PHT | NCT | CDT

Natchez Trace Trail (NTT) - 500 miles - View Gallery

Closely following the route of the Old Natchez Trace, a mostly-vanished 500-mile footpath used for centuries, the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail was designated in 1968. Unlike its counterparts from that year, the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, the main purpose of this trail was to interpret the historic resources found along the Old Natchez Trace.

Only 65 miles of trail have been built, primarily through the efforts of volunteers from the Boy Scouts, the Student Conservation Association, and the now-defunct Natchez Trace Trail Conference. These four trail segments parallel both the Old Natchez Trace and the Natchez Trace Parkway, a scenic driving route spanning 444 miles between Nashville, Tennessee and Natchez, Mississippi.

Based on animal trails and trails created by early indigenous tribes, the Old Natchez Trace was once one of the United States’ most important commerce routes. Thousands of merchants, soldiers, postriders, and explorers walked or rode the trail in the years between the 1780s and the 1830s. Farmers and boatmen from the Ohio Valley – coming from as far north as Pennsylvania, but called “Kaintucks” – would float their produce and wares down the rivers to the mighty Mississippi. Reaching Natchez or heading on to New Orleans, they’d put their goods up for sale, including the boat. Then they’d walk home, along the Trace, through lands of the Choctaw and Chickasaw. Nearly 50 inns provided overnight accommodations, each about a day’s walk apart. By the 1830s, steamboats provided inexpensive transportation upriver, making the long walk less necessary. By 1832, both the Choctaw and Chickasaw had been forcibly removed from their lands to reservations in Oklahoma. The Natchez Trace fell into disuse.

Today, a thru-hike along the Natchez Trace is mostly a roadwalk along the lovely Natchez Trace Parkway. There is no coordinated effort underway for the trail to be completed. Day hikers can use the parkway to access the four segments of the National Scenic Trail, each with clearly marked trailheads:

• Between Mileposts 59 and 52.4, the Rocky Springs Trail is a ten mile segment that includes the spectacular Owen Creek waterfall, a multi-tiered cascade through a grotto dense with ferns and mosses. A side trail leads to the ghost town of Rocky Springs.

• The Tupelo Trail, running six miles between Mileposts 266 and 260.8, passes through the site of a former Chickasaw village.

• North of Jackson, Mississippi, the Ridgeland Trail is a 24-mile segment between Mileposts 131 and 108, set as the western boundary of Florida by the British in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian Wars.

• In Tennessee, the Leipers Fork Trail offers 24 miles of scenic hiking less than an hour south of Nashville, between Mileposts 427 and 408.

In addition to these segments, numerous short hikes are along the Parkway, such as the Sunken Trace at Milepost 41.5, where you can walk a section of the original Natchez Trace that is so well-worn it has become a ditch through the forest, and the Cypress Swamp at Milepost 122, a 15-minute loop trail that circles around a cypress and tupelo swamp, where alligators drift through the dark water.

The Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail is administered by the Natchez Trace Parkway, part of the National Park Service.

“Fun Facts”
Meriwether Lewis died along the Natchez Trace on October 11, 1809, when he stopped for the night at Grinder’s Stand. To this day, it’s a mystery whether he was murdered or it was suicide—it was not a natural death. He carried his journals from the famed Lewis & Clark expedition, and they have never been found. An interpretive trail near Milepost 386 tells the story.

After defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, General Andrew Jackson marched his troops back north up the Natchez Trace. Jackson Falls, at Milepost 404.7, commemorates his presence.

There are many significant burial and platform mounds along the Natchez Trace, including the Nanih Wayia Mound. Pottery shards found around this whale-shaped 218 foot tall, 140 foot wide mound indicate that the area was inhabited as early as 100 B.C. One of the Choctaw legends is that this mound gave birth to their tribe.