The Natchez Trace Parkway is located in the Coastal Plains region of the states of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as the Appalachian Mountains region of the states of Alabama and Tennessee.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a 444-mile recreational road and scenic drive through three states, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. It roughly follows the Old Natchez Trace along the same historic travel corridor used by the ancient people, contemporary native people, Kaintucks, European settlers, robbers and thieves, slave traders, soldiers, and future presidents of this country, who all did walk upon the old dirt trail hundreds of years past.

Today, people can enjoy not only a scenic drive but also hiking, biking, horseback riding, and camping along the Natchez Trace parkway. Yes, there are parts of the Old Natchez Trace that can still be found along the Parkway and are still available for visitors to walk upon.

While walking along these old sunken foot paths, the only indication of what century you are in is the two lane ribbon of asphalt cutting through the trees upon which you arrived to find the sunken path.

Still, the Natchez Trace we travel today is not the same as the sunken dirt path the Kaintucks had to travel to bring their crops and wares to market many decades ago, fording rivers and swampy areas, fending for their own well being for weeks on end without any outside support except an occasional stand where one could acquire a meal and a hay stack to sleep against.

Instead, today, the Natchez Trace Parkway is a modern paved highway with concrete bridges spanning the many rivers, as well as a highly developed road system into and out of many cities near by, which are well stocked with anything a person might need to make the modern day journey, including even a cup of hot coffee from the local coffee shop chain.

Begun: 1938

Completed: 2005

Colbert Ferry, Milepost 327.3

Buzzard Roost Spring, Milepost 320.3

At one stop, I find out that the Natchez Trace is purported to have been walked, or at least crossed by Hernando de Soto during the fall of 1540 in present day Alabama near the Tombigbee River.

Awake, rise and dress in my fall blues, start the jammer engine and drive west out of town on SH 133 until this highway comes to an end. I then turn right and drive north on SH 20 for about ten miles and here turn onto the Natchez Trace Parkway.

I then continue north through the last six miles of Alabama and come to the 35th latitude, which is the boundary that was set in 1735 to divide North Carolina from South Carolina. When North Carolina released claim to lands west of the Appalachian mountains, this allowed the establishment of Tennessee with the same southern boundary. It was John Coffee, who served Andrew Jackson′s as one of his generals during the Battle of New Orleans, who between 1817 and 1822, supervised the survey of this state boundary between Tennessee and Alabama.

It is at a roadside kiosk where I learned this history again.