Natchez Trace Parkway: Meriwether Lewis Site to Tupelo

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Meriwether Lewis Site

   Here the Natchez Trace Parkway comes to a monument that carries a story with a question mark at the end. In October 1809, Meriwether Lewis, famed for the expedition to the Pacific with William Clark, stopped at a roadside inn called Grinder's Stand while travelling to Washington, and in the early hours of the next morning he was found dead of gunshot wounds. The official verdict was suicide, but some historians and relatives have argued for murder or robbery, and the argument has never been settled. A tall broken column, raised in 1848, marks his grave, and it is a sober, quiet place in the middle of the trees.

   Read the complete Meriwether Lewis Site write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Meriwether Lewis Site is where the day begins. Next is Hohenwald.

2. 2. Hohenwald

   Hohenwald is a small town in the Tennessee hills, and it has two peculiar claims to fame. The first is in its name, which is German for high forest, and which reflects the Swiss settlers who founded a colony here in the 1870s, hoping to make a new life in the hills of Middle Tennessee. The colony struggled, but the name and a trace of that heritage remain. The second is more recent and rather more surprising: the town is home to an elephant sanctuary, set up in the 1990s as a refuge for old and retired elephants from zoos and circuses.

   Read the complete Hohenwald write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Hohenwald comes up about 13 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tupelo.

3. 3. Tupelo

   Tupelo is where the Natchez Trace Parkway keeps its headquarters, and it is a fitting place to begin or end a day on that road. The Trace itself is older than any highway in the country, a path worn into the earth by bison, then by the Chickasaw and Choctaw, then by boatmen who floated cargo down the Mississippi to Natchez and walked home through the woods. The modern parkway follows that line for 444 miles to Nashville, a ribbon of smooth asphalt with no trucks, no billboards, no traffic lights and a speed limit of 50 miles an hour that rangers take seriously.

   Read the complete Tupelo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 239 km.