Thursday, 16 January 2020
I was getting really tired and more than a little upset about being so far behind in my blog. I could pick up a wifi signal here and, given the low price, thought seriously about staying here another night. But after walking the dogs this morning I realized there's just not enough room here for us. I'd thought I could take them down that access road between the campground and the highway, but even though it's a dead-end road and I saw almost nothing past this campground, there's traffic on it. The cars I saw move quickly and there's no place at all to get off the road - both sides of the road slope down sharply into drainage ditches.
But after I spent an hour trying to find a larger campground likely to have wifi access near Corinth, which is where I want to go next, or Holly Springs or Oxford (where I want to go after Corinth), I realized there isn't anything like that past Tupelo, about halfway between here and Corinth. And the one I found charges $40 a night, which is more than I wanted to pay. But I walked the dogs around the campground once again and realized we couldn't possibly stay there another 24 hours - there just wasn't room enough for them - so I called up Tupelo for a reservation.
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| today's route |
On Thursdays at 10 AM, MS Public Broadcasting airs a program called "Auto Correct," featuring a "lady auto mechanic." Every time they say that - and they say it often - my teeth just grate. It's an interesting program, she seems generally knowledgeable about auto mechanics, and lots of people - men and women - call in from all over to ask questions about their cars.
Later on Thursdays, they air a program called "Southern Remedy - Kids and Teens." This is hosted by Dr. Morgan McLeod, an internist in adolescent medicine and pediatrician in Jackson. Her voice is a high little-girl sort of voice, which made me question her expertise for the first half-hour I listened to her program, but she seems very knowledgeable and does a good job of handling the callers she gets. Today's program was generally about headaches and I actually heard a caller say, "Queen Elizabeth showed me how to cure my headache - take off my crown and put an ice pack on my head." He really said that.
As you can tell by me talking about these radio programs, there's not a whole lot to look at while driving through Mississippi, even on regular highways and not interstates or the Natchez Trace Parkway. I'm seeing a lot of cropland in this part of the state but have no idea what crops they'll be planting here. I think MS is still primarily an agricultural state; even Wikipedia mentions only a few car factories under "industrialization."
This fact seems to be at least partly a result of the state constitution the then-Democrats (now Republicans) passed in 1890 when Reconstruction troops pulled out: among other things, it discouraged corporate industrial development and encouraged rural agriculture. Operating under this system for decades, MS hasn't had much chance to pull itself out.
Putting all their eggs in one basket became a serious problem during repeated flooding events over the course of subsequent decades, followed by severe drought during the Depression. On top of that was the boll weevil wreaking havoc with cotton crops across the South. I can't tell that MS ever thought about diversifying into - say - peanuts as Alabama and Georgia farmers did.
All of that is a long way of saying these croplands are probably planted with cotton in the spring. And in fact I've been passing several large cotton fields with lots of cotton still in them.
I passed by the town of Egypt which, it turns out, is one of 2 towns in MS named Egypt. The other is over south of Greenwood, a ways north of Jackson. When I looked them up I found that Wikipedia has no information at all about the 2nd one, other than that it exists, and the only thing they say about the one I encountered is that it was devastated by several major tornadoes in 2011.
Having just said MS doesn't have much manufacturing, I'll say I passed a plant labeled HSM Solutions, which turns out to manufacture plastic stuff - packaging and toys and things.
A little farther along I passed Morgan Fabrics, a fabric maker with offices in Los Angeles, Shanghai and (drum roll!) tiny Shannon, MS. And in Tupelo I saw Gum Tree Fabrics, a wholesale fabric distributor worldwide.
Tupelo area
My first stop in town was to a recycling center. This time I'd taken the precaution of calling the city ahead of time, and the young woman assured me I could take recycling to this address. And she was right. Still no place for glass, but at least I got rid of the rest of my accumulation. If it's true that Louisiana has places that accept glass, they're going to get quite a range from me next month - everything from tiny mustard jars to wine bottles. They've been stacking up for a month now, since Dec. 15th in Auburn, AL, and there's still 2 weeks left in this month. But I felt lighter getting rid of milk jugs and papers.
Then I went back over to the Natchez Trace Parkway, because the Visitor Center has some information about the Old Natchez Trace. I'll put that information at the bottom of this post.*
From there I went down the road a mile to a grocery store, and then on to my campground for the next 3 nights. It seems a pleasant place, though more than I'd like to pay. But the $40 they're asking is a long way lower than the $55 the KOA near Starkville wanted, so I guess it's all relative.
* Old Natchez Trace
The Parkway itself is 444 miles long and crosses 3 states and 4 ecosystems. It was created in 1938 to commemorate the historic Old Trace.
The Old Trace, though, was longer and much much older. It likely started as animal trails used for migration and to get to water and salt licks. It's likely humans began arriving across the land bridge thousands of years ago, eventually migrating down here, but what's known for sure is that Native Americans were in this area by 700 AD.
First the Woodlands Native culture, then the Mississippian culture, lived in this area, leaving behind Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez descendants. Natives used the animal trails here, as elsewhere, and developed settlements along them. They began using the by-then clearly marked Trace for hunting and trading among tribes. By the time Europeans arrived in the late 1500s, the Old Trace was practically a highway.
Natchez was established in 1716 and New Orleans in 1718; they quickly became major international ports. Farmers in the Ohio River Valley from as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio began taking their goods down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by flatboat. There they'd sell not only their goods but also their boats for lumber, and then walk back home - they sure didn't want to try to pole those boats back up those powerful rivers. These farmers were called Kaintucks, the folks in the southern ports having a mistaken impression that they were all from Kentucky. The walk home along the Trace would take them about 4 months.
In 1800, the Trace was designated an official US Post Road.
This designation allowed mail delivery from the East Coast down to what they called "Old Southwest." "Stands" began to appear along the route - usually rough cabins where travelers could get supplies or find food or a place to stay. These places weren't always safe, though - in fact, traveling along the Old Trace could be dangerous because of robbers and such. Travelers tended to go in groups for safety.
Not only was it a long walk back North, but it was a hard one - the damp heat of a Southern summer, the flies and mosquitoes, and into TN there were the foothills of the Appalachians, which only got higher as they traveled North.
Meriweather Lewis followed the Old Trace when he traveled to Washington, DC, in 1809. Sadly, he died at one of the stands along the way, and historians are still debating whether he was a victim of suicide or murder.
Gen. Andrew Jackson used the Old Trace often himself, and used it in 1813 to march his troops from TN down to Natchez in the War of 1812, then back again to TN that same year, and again in 1815 to return home after the Battle of New Orleans.
Use of the Old Trace changed by 1830 because of the invention of the steamboat, which could take Kaintucks back upriver in a fraction of the time with much less effort. The Trail became increasingly abandoned.
It was still used though and in 1863 Gen. Ulysses Grant, making his second attempt to secure Vicksburg, led his 40,000 troops across the MS River and along the Old Trace to come at the city from a different angle. The subsequent siege of Vicksburg was ultimately successful.
But by the 1900s, the Old Trace was being swallowed by woodlands and wetlands. A lengthy effort by history-minded citizens resulted in the Trace's preservation, which became official in 1938.
It now contains 4 ecosystems and 8 major watersheds and is one of America's most diverse national parks.
I know these are had to see, but if you're interested in environmental information maybe you can enlarge them. The photos, though, show examples of the changing terrain along the Old Trace.
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