Natchez Trace: Last DayOct 31, 2010
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No Sign of Fall this Far South
Trace South
Trace along Ross-Barnett Reservoir
Today, we drove south on the Trace towards Natchez. As the pictures show, fall has barely begun here. The forests and fields remain beautiful and, just before Natchez, we stopped at the Mt. Locust Stand (hotel) built in 1780. As we've learned, most of the Ohio farmers walked home along the Trace, after selling their crops and boats in Natchez (what happened to all those boats??). As many as 50 stands were operated along the trace in the first decades of the 19th century to provide shelter for walkers. Mt. Locus is one of the few that remains, and one of the fanciest. It was really a sort of mini-plantation, with a maximum of 25 slaves working the surrounding cotton fields (now beautiful, golden meadows), and just several rooms of the house devoted to patrons. The house itself is under interior repair, so we could only photograph it from the yard; but its proximity to affluent Natchez supposedly made it among the best of the Trace hotels.
Note the difference between family and slave cemeteries at Mt. Locust.
