Opportunity for easy travel, over trails that were once Indian foot paths, is offered now to motorists on perfect concrete highways. Modern roads, which slowly evolved from dirt roads to paved highways, stretch from Nashville, Tennessee, in a continuous smooth concrete ribbon to Natchez, on the great Mississippi River.

Days when the beauty of the Southland could be viewed only from a steamboat deck; days when transportation of passenger and freight could be handled only by oxcart or slow stage coach or horse and buggy (a three-weeks journey from Nashville to Natchez) are gone forever, and soon the Deep South will be directly connected by a day’s pleasant journey with all the cities and towns along the Natchez Trace.

By treaty with Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian tribes the United States Government in 1801 secured a permit to open the Natchez Trace as a wagon road over which the mails could travel.

That same trail or “trace” from Nashville to Natchez is 500 miles of consecutive beauty spots along continuous acres of parkways and historic highways.

Mrs. Roan Fleming Byrnes, serving as President of the Natchez Trace Highway Committee, in a recent publication says:

“The ancient trail was traveled by most of the well-known figures in the history of our country: Jefferson Davis; Peggy and Lorenzo Dow, the revivalists; the fast riding John Morgan; the famous Audubon. Lafayette rode over the Trace during his visit to the Natchez country; Aaron Burr was given his preliminary trial for treason under two liveoaks just beside the Trace; Meriwether Lewis died at an inn on the Trace when returning from his Western explorations.

“The life of Andrew Jackson is closely interwoven with the windings of the Natchez Trace. At Springfield plantation, in Jefferson county, Mississippi, Jackson was married to Rachael Robards; and, near Nashville, Tennessee, is the ‘Hermitage’, the home he built for Rachael.

“It was when marching his rejected Tennessee militia homeward over the Trace from Natchez to Nashville in 1813 that Jackson acquired his famous nickname, ‘Old Hickory’.”

The unusual beauty of the deep cut roadways, worn down by travel throughout the years, and the overlapping, moss-draped trees, will be preserved as far as possible.

Many of these old roads running into Natchez lead through deep, tunnel-like ways whose sides are sheer walls ten to eighty feet high and draped with long fronds of overhanging Spanish moss.

These roadways of tunnels and curves are weird and beautiful, affording an irresistible attraction for all travelers.