Natchez Trace State Park

The state park is not on the Natchez Trace. When the park was named, officials assumed the old trail ran through the land; later research placed the original route several miles to the east. What the land does have is a different kind of history, written in dirt. In the 1930s this part of Henderson, Carroll and Benton counties was some of the state's most eroded ground, with gullies seventy-five feet deep and three hundred feet wide, the mark of worn-out, abused farmland.

The federal government stepped in with three New Deal agencies. The Resettlement Administration moved families off the worn-out farms, and the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration reforested the hills and planted kudzu to hold the soil. In 1939 the Department of Agriculture leased the land to the state, and the CCC and WPA built a lake, a Colonial Revival lodge, a bathhouse, a beach, twenty brick cabins, picnic areas and trails. A fire tower and a water tower from 1937 can still be seen.

The park's most unusual survival is the Fairfield Gullies, a preserved stretch that shows how bad the damage was. Natchez Trace State Park and the surrounding state forest are the largest state-owned recreation area in West Tennessee, with three lakes, hiking and camping. The Chickasaw (Chikasha) lost this country in the 1818 Jackson Purchase, more than a century before the Resettlement Administration moved families off it.