The Natchez Trace was an important road that connected Nashville with Natchez on the Mississippi River. It was over this pathway that many people from western areas of settled regions worked their way to new homes in the South. The Trace was a connection of old Native American trails that were used and improved upon by Spanish, French, English and American travelers. In 1800, Congress designated the route as a post road and it proved important to the military for rapid troop movement. Andrew Jackson marched his forces to the Battle of New Orleans (1815) over the Natchez Trace. The advent of the steamboat in the 1830s sharply reduced the route's importance. With its dark and mysterious history of danger and intrigue, "The Trace" is a popular destination for modern visitors fascinated by the tales of peril that faced the daring early settlers and traders of the region.

Located on the Natchez Trace Parkway (NTP) at mile marker 55, Rocky Springs is a ghost town, and a fascinating place to explore. Founded in 1837, the town was a thriving community by 1860, but then a series of disasters began: Union troops looted the town during the Civil War; a yellow fever epidemic decimated the town's population; the boll weevil wreaked havoc with the cotton crop; and then the town's titular springs went dry. By 1920, Rocky Springs was dead. What's left of it -- a few artifacts, some building foundations, and a church with absolutely the most gorgeous cemetery you'll ever see -- has been preserved as a historic exhibit, and is a must-see for anyone traveling the NTP.

Although the NTP parallels the route of the old Trace pathway, the Trace itself is gone -- almost. Small sections of it have been preserved, the most evocative of which is called the Sunken Trace, at mile marker 41.5. Although the Sunken Trace is just a short walk from the roadway and only about 200 yards long, it feels like another world. As its name suggests, it's deeply eroded into the ground, like a giant ditch or channel. Its earthen walls and the canopy of trees overhead give it a feeling of isolation, and it's surprisingly easy to lose yourself in experience as you walk along its length, imagining what it must have been like to traverse the Trace's entire length in the days before European settlers arrived.

Native American mounds are located throughout much of the United States, and Mississippi (which was named after an Indian tribe) is particularly fertile territory for them. The Emerald Mound, a massive, grass-covered plateau located at mile marker 10.3, near the NTP's southern terminus, is the second-largest Indian mound in the country. It measures 770 by 435 feet at its base and rises to 35 feet. It is thought to have been used between the years 1250 and 1600. Walking trails allow visitors to climb up the mound, and interpretive displays explain how the mounds were built and the ceremonies, in which corpses and artifacts were buried, that were held there.