The Natchez Trace Parkway in Tennessee: The Alabama Line to Nashville
About 102 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Tennessee, from the Alabama line past Meriwether Lewis's death site and the Gordon House to the northern terminus near Nashville.
The Route at a Glance
The Natchez Trace Parkway runs 444 miles from Natchez, Mississippi, to Tennessee Highway 100 near Nashville, and the National Park Service calls it an All-American Road. This drive takes the last 102 miles of it, from the Alabama line at milepost 341.7 to the northern terminus at milepost 444: a little under three hours without stops, at 50 miles an hour on most of the road, with no commercial vehicles and no entrance fee. It continues the Mississippi route, which ends at the Mississippi-Alabama line; the parkway then crosses roughly thirty miles of northwest Alabama before it enters Tennessee. The Natchez Trace & South-Central Tennessee and Nashville & the Cumberland cover the country. The Old Trace ran through Chickasaw (Chikasha) territory, and the land at the Duck River crossing did not pass out of Chickasaw hands until the cession of 1805.
The first 44 miles, from the Alabama line to the Meriwether Lewis area, have pull-offs and no stop in this guide. At milepost 370, where US 64 crosses the parkway, an exhibit shelter carries panels about the Trail of Tears, and at milepost 382.2 a small picnic area marks Metal Ford, the historic crossing of the Buffalo River named for its stone bottom.
The Meriwether Lewis Site at milepost 385.9 is where Lewis died, on the morning of October 11, 1809, at Grinder's Stand, an inn on the Trace. He was 35. He had left St. Louis to protest the War Department's refusal to pay vouchers he had submitted, and he traveled with John Pernia, a free Black man who served him; at Fort Pickering they joined James Neelly, the U.S. agent to the Chickasaw, and Neelly's enslaved servant. The Park Service says historical accounts support the probability of suicide and that accounts from 1848 on suggest he may have been murdered; the question is still discussed. Tennessee's legislature paid $500 in 1848 for the monument, a column deliberately left broken, a common sign of a life cut short. No drawing of Grinder's Stand survives and only hearthstones remain. The log cabin at the entrance, built in 1935, holds exhibits and a ranger contact station, and a paved trail called Footsteps Through History covers the travelers of the Trace, among them the Chickasaw and the Kaintucks, the boatmen who walked home after selling their flatboats downriver.
The next 22 miles hold small stops: Fall Hollow at milepost 391.9, a waterfall with a 20-foot drop reached by a steep natural-ground trail; Sheboss Place at milepost 400.2, the site of a stand run by Mrs. Cranfield, with no visible remnants; a tobacco barn of 1959 at milepost 401.4; and Jackson Falls at milepost 404.7, at the end of a 900-foot paved trail with stairs. At milepost 407.7 the Gordon House and Ferry Site stands beside the Duck River, one of only two structures left on the parkway from the days of the Old Trace. In 1802 Captain John Gordon went into partnership with William Colbert, a Chickasaw leader, to run a ferry and an inn here, because the ground was still Chickasaw territory and any business on it needed a Chickasaw partner. After the cession of 1805 Tennessee granted the land to Gordon on the strength of his improvements. He later scouted for Andrew Jackson against the Red Stick faction of the Muscogee (Creek), and the Park Service sets his service beside its cost: the Muscogee were forced to give up 23 million acres. His wife Dolly oversaw the building of the house in 1818 while he was away, and she ran the farm with her children and enslaved people until her death in 1859. You cannot go inside, but you can walk around the house and follow a short trail on the Old Trace down to the river, where the ferry ran until a bridge replaced it in 1896.
The last 36 miles carry the parkway toward Nashville. At milepost 426.3 a monument honors the volunteers who marched the Trace in the War of 1812, and at milepost 438 the Double Arch Bridge at Birdsong Hollow, built in 1994, is 1,572 feet long and is viewed from an overlook about 155 feet above the valley. The drive ends at the northern terminus at milepost 444, where the parkway meets Tennessee Highway 100 about 17 miles southwest of downtown Nashville. From I-40 west of Nashville, take exit 192 (McCrory Lane) and follow it about five miles to the entrance.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
2 stops along the route, in driving order from Tennessee-Alabama line, Natchez Trace Parkway milepost 341.7 to Northern terminus at Tennessee Highway 100, milepost 444, near Pasquo, Tennessee.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let The Natchez Trace Parkway in Tennessee: The Alabama Line to Nashville do what it does best.
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