Natchez Trace Parkway: Nashville to Tupelo

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Nashville

   Nashville is where the Natchez Trace begins in spirit, although the parkway itself starts on the southwestern side of the city, near the town of Pasquo, a short ride from downtown. The city sits on the Cumberland River, in a bowl of rolling Tennessee hills, and has been a centre of music since the Grand Ole Opry began broadcasting from here in the 1920s. Broadway, the strip of honky-tonks in the middle of town, plays live music from morning till late, and the Ryman Auditorium, a former church with pews that still serve as seating, is one of the most respected small concert halls in the country.

   Read the complete Nashville write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

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

2. 2. 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 comes up about 127 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hohenwald.

3. 3. 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

   about 140 km into the recorded legs you reach Hohenwald. Next is Tupelo.

4. 4. 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

   Tupelo closes the day.