The Natchez Trace runs some 440+ miles from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. It’s an ancient animal trail which was later used by mound builders, then by the Southeastern tribes, then by colonials and settlers, the Pony Express, and the early military and regimental forces. Later the armies of the North and South picked it up, and most recently, the route and its history has been preserved by the National Park Service.

During the Trace’s heyday in the late 1700s and early 1800s, settlers transported their wares down the Mississippi on flat boats and rafts, which they then sold when they sold their goods . . . and walked home. The trip was a dangerous one; everyone knew that travelers going North had probably just finished selling while travelers headed South were carrying things to sell.

Today the Trace is nearly gone, but the National Park Service has built a road to follow it as best they can.  It’s a carefully manicured, park-type road which hums smoothly beneath the wheels and automatically makes you feel as if you’re both miles and decades away from anything worth worrying about.  It is a road which distance bicyclists would die for, and motorcyclists would take a month off of work just to experience.

Commercial vehicles are prohibited, the speed limit is usually about 55mph, and the road makes for a beautiful drive. It is, in a way, isolated; there are only a very few buildings along the length of the Trace. In order to find gas, hotels, or communities, you have to leave the Trace via one of the exit interchanges rather the same way you’d leave an Interstate highway.

Scattered along the road, the Service has marked out nature trails

to illustrate and educate about the development of the surrounding forest and swamp, or historical markers to mark burial grounds,

event sites, and early buildings.

The park has also managed to locate and protect sections of the original Trace. Some of those fragments show how heavily the Trace had been traveled in the past, and suggest nothing more than a peaceful and easy stroll in the woods.

Other sections are frighteningly intimidating, such as the sunken sections of the Trace

where the path runs below ground level and even in dry weather you wonder about flash flooding and bogs, or how often the high sides provided vantage points for an ambush.

It’s a terrific journey, and I found only one jarring note in the entire trip:  the Park Service signs.  While many of them were fascinating tidbits of the history, they also contained language which reflected an attitude I didn’t like.  In all cases where the markers talked about Native American relocation or the colonial acquisition of Native American lands, the language was neutral, and depressingly smooth, giving no indication of the reality behind the event.  Literally, they said that the tribes “relocated” and “turned over” their lands to the government.  That disturbs me.  There was nothing voluntary about any of those actions; the language was far from precise, and I wondered who had decided to hide the past in a layer of palatability.