Natchez Trace - Development and Disappearance of The Trace

Development and Disappearance of The Trace

Even before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson wanted to connect the distant Mississippi frontier to other settled areas of the United States. To foster communication with what was then called the Southwest, he designated a postal road to be built between Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road, the southern branch of the road ended at Nashville, Tennessee, and the Mississippi River. To emphasize American sovereignty in the area, he decided to call it the Columbian Highway. The US signed treaties with the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes to keep peace as European Americans entered the area in greater number. In 1801 the United States Army began blazing the trail, performing major work to prepare it as a thoroughfare. The work was first done by soldiers reassigned from West Tennessee, then later by civilian contract. By 1809, the trail was fully navigable by wagon. Critical to the success of the Trace as a trade route was the development of inns and trading posts, referred to at the time as "stands." For the most part, the stands developed southbound from the head of the trail in Nashville.

Many early United States settlements in Mississippi and Tennessee developed along the Natchez Trace. Some of the most prominent were Washington, the old capital of Mississippi; "old Greenville", where Andrew Jackson plied his occupation as a slave trader; and Port Gibson, among others. By 1816, the continued development of both Memphis, with its access to the Mississippi River, and Nashville, which with Jackson's Military Road had a direct line to New Orleans, Louisiana, began shifting trade both east and west away from the Trace. As author William C. Davis writes in his book A Way Through the Wilderness, it was "a victim of its own success" by encouraging development in the frontier area.

With the rise of steamboat culture on the Mississippi, the Trace lost its importance as a national road, as goods could be moved more quickly and cheaply, in greater quantity, on the river. Although many authors have written that the Trace disappeared back into the woods, much of it continued to be used by people living in its vicinity. With large sections of the Trace in Tennessee converted to county roads for operation, it continues to be used.