Date Visited: 4/4/2019
Near Mathiston, Mississippi, in Choctaw County we came upon MP 198.6 and the historic marker for The Old Natchez Trace. It’s here where we learned how the trail became a road.
In 1800 congress established a postal route from Nashville Tennessee to Natchez Mississippi. In 1801 the US Army began clearing the trace trail between Daniel Boone’s Wilderness road in Tennessee and the Mississippi River in Natchez. This work was later turned over to Civilian contractors and by 1809 the journey north along the trace was fully navigable by wagon taking only two to three weeks.
Considering that then President Andrew Jackson (who directed the US Army to clear the trace) also conducted slave trade in “Old” Greenville Mississippi, one has to wonder where the true motivation for developing the trace was rooted? Was it another example of politicians wielding their political power to further their own greed?
None-the-less it all quickly became a mute point as not long after the Trace was cleared the invention of the steam engine (along with the development and completion of alternate roads) made the once popular Natchez route obsolete. Portions of the newly cleared road would later became county roads and are still used today, while other sections of the road disappeared back into the forest.
I won’t get on my soapbox about the politics of greed, but I will encourage you to keep apprised of the danger that the energy sector and unchecked political power poses to the future and health of our national park system by reading The Undoing Of Our Public Lands and National Parks and by watching the following film.
Next week we leave the trace for a one night stay at one of Mississippi’s most beautiful state parks.
Until then…
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