The Nifty Natchez Trace

By Glenn Oster

What a super place to bicycle! Never heard of The Natchez Trace? Great - that makes it worth my while to write this article. Let's hope it's worth your while to read it.

The Natchez Trace is a four hundred forty-four mile National Park, so to speak. It's a highway administered by the National Park Service stretching approximately from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez Mississippi. For thirty-two miles it nibbles a little on Alabama. The highway has only two lanes and no shoulders. However, no commercial traffic is permitted - no trucks, and traffic most times and places is light. In the areas around Tupelo and Jackson, Mississippi, the traffic was notable, but not all that intimidating. Paralleling the highway are nicely manicured grassy areas extending in places several hundred feet to stands of coniferous and deciduous trees. Additionally, many points of interest pop up along the way with placards explaining various aspects of the area's history. It's surely not one long grind to get over with as quickly as possible. Savor it as you ride.

History - what was The Natchez Trace? The answer dates back to the late 1700s and early 1800s. Enterprising men in places upstream, like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, would load rafts with merchandise and float them down stream. They followed rivers such as the Ohio to the Mississippi. Continuing downstream on Ole Miss, the rafters would find a port where their merchandise was needed. They'd off load the cargo, sell the raft's timbers for home building, buy a horse and ride back north so they could repeat the scenario. Natchez was a popular end point for many of them. The roadway on which they began their journey back north was none other than The Natchez Trace.

Initially, The Trace, as many early roadways were called, was a path beaten down by Native Americans, followed by French and Spanish settlers. However, traveling via The Trace was not without its trials. Unfriendly Indians, bands of thieves, floods, thigh-deep mud, disease bearing insects and few amenities were all possibilities if not probabilities along this "super highway." Then, with the introduction of steamboats, circa 1812, transportation methods changed, and The Trace fell into disuse.

The United States government saw merit in preserving this history and in the late thirties began construction of the highway, as we now know it. It's still not complete. There is a twenty-six-mile discontinuity in the area around Jackson, Mississippi. (Download map from the website.) Let's hope that it's completed by the time you try it out.

When riding The Trace, you'll be pleased that there are no billboards. You will see segments of the original Natchez Trace, an original house, Indian mounds, the grave site of thirteen unknown Confederate soldiers, a cypress swamp, meandering streams, waterfalls, modest rivers like the Duck, huge rivers like the Tennessee and the Tenn - Tombigbee Waterway, farm land, French Camp (where sorghum is made in the Fall), miles of trees, wild flowers and flowering shrubs, the delightful fragrance of honeysuckle and (on Saturday and Sunday afternoons) the heavenly bodies sun bathing on the beaches of enormous Ross Barnett Reservoir.

If what I've described gets your juices flowing a little, you may want to check out their website. Use your search engine to locate "Natchez Trace Parkway" where you can download maps and find extensive information. Alternatively, e-mail, phone or write to the National Park Service for a packet of material that they will send at no cost providing information on public transportation, The Trace's campgrounds (no charge, but no hot water or showers), restaurants and bicycle shops not far off the highway, a very useful map of The Trace telling where all the interesting points are along the way, sites of drinking water availability and lots more, although the material is notably silent as to the heavenly bodies. To order a packet of information and a map of The Trace, contact:

Natchez Trace Parkway 
2680 Natchez Trace Parkway 
Tupelo, Mississippi 38804 
E-mail natr_interpretation@nps.gov 
Phone 1 (800) 305-7417

I started the ride mid-April at the Northern terminus on Tennessee Route 96, now extended to Tennessee Route 100. Nobody was inclined to do the trip when I wanted to; so I went "by my lonesome." The weather was good for about 75% of the time, marginal (heavy clouds, chilly, damp) 20% of the time and too stormy and windy to ride the remaining 5%. Even with the occasional marginal and bad weather I experienced, I believe it was a fine time to do the ride. Later in Spring, Summer and early Fall, I'd expect the pavement to melt your tires and the sun to fry your gray matter, assuming the mosquitoes hadn't devoured you first. Were I to have done it differently, I would have started two weeks earlier to catch the dogwoods and redbuds in blossom.

View from one of the many hills

Some consider The Trace a flat route, and it is for many miles, but don't count on that. Psych yourself up for hills, not like The Blue Ridge Parkway, but hills nonetheless. I was carrying full camping gear, tools, spare parts, food, camera and all the other things that whim dictates. Each of those hills reminded me that the topography is not all flat, especially in the northern section. More of a problem for me the first few days, was wind coming at me from the directions (not time of day) of ten o'clock to two o'clock. Early on when my body hadn't gotten the message of why it was there at all, it complained regularly about the double whammy of hills and head wind. In time, the hills flattened, the wind gave me some respite and my body came to understand that its job was making that bicycle move.

As to terrain and wind, it would have been easier to start from Natchez and head north, especially if I were riding only one direction. The hills are fewer and my body would have been more in shape for the hilly northern section. Moreover, camping facilities on and off The Trace are far apart. The wimpier side of my nature says that at times it would make much more sense to do it as a van supported trip. On a bike, you can't get off the route very many places for restaurant meals. Also, by using van support, you could be hauled around that 26-mile gap that I mentioned earlier. It's the only real negative to riding The Trace. I encountered some bad road surface there and blew out my back tire.

How much time should you allow to bicycle The Trace? That, of course, depends upon factors such as how strong a rider you are, whether you are self contained or van supported, the direction of prevailing winds, how much time you like to spend at the points of interest and how often you want to take time off for R&R. As a point of reference, I'm up in years, basically a wimp, and, as mentioned, was self-contained. It took me eight days to ride down (average 55 miles per day), spent a day in Natchez (Mississippi River and many antebellum mansions) and seven days to ride north (average 63 miles per day.)

Fields bordering the Parkway

Insects were almost no problem at all, with exception of the southernmost section of the route where the gnats were bothersome and seemed to relish my insect repellant especially formulated for flies and related annoyances. Again, arriving earlier in the season would have diminished that bother. Natchez weather was so hot and humid that I couldn't put on more clothes to keep the gnats at bay.

The Park Rangers were interested and courteous. Make a point of stopping at the Tupelo Visitor Center. The staff there is most helpful. It is obvious that bicycle touring is more than tolerated; it's encouraged. One ranger at the Dancy Ranger Station delayed going to lunch and spent nearly an hour with me answering my questions and volunteering interesting information about law enforcement in a national park. They have to undergo virtually the same training, as a state trooper must. Some wish that their duties were more as a ranger and less as a policeman.

Bicyclists on The Trace were few. I did come across two van supported groups doing approximately 200-mile sections. They were unaccustomed to seeing a self-contained biker and asked many questions. Then, there was the young couple who really were living on their bicycles. Thirty miles was a long day for them. They had spent the previous night camped at a picnic grove where camping is not permitted. They looked clean personally, and their clothes, while definitely not bicycling type outfits, were also clean. I quickly learned how. The girl, who was about age seventeen, was cleaning out a trash can. Odd. Really odd. She proceeded to put in soap powder, water and clothes. Thereupon, she lowered herself into the trash can, which came up above her waist and began tramping up and down on the clothes like a person crushing grapes to make wine. It takes all kinds. When I discussed their planned route, I came to realize that it was so vague that they might never finish. Who knows, they could inadvertently establish all sorts of firsts for the Guinness Book of Records.

As mentioned, this highway is like the Blue Ridge Parkway. True, it doesn't boast of high mountain views, but, on the other hand, it doesn't require the physical ability that the Blue Ridge Parkway demands. As they say about some computer programs," It's user friendly - try it."

Copyright ©  2003 Glenn Oster