The Lunch Box Journals

Billings to Biloxi

The pall of the corona virus hangs over all and after my own experience with it I decide to go ahead and go on a winter 2020 adventure anyway.  The reality is that traveling in the Lunch Box is just as safe, if not safer, than staying home.  It is virtually a “self-contained” life style with the majority of interaction with other people occurring outdoors where social distancing is easy to do.  So, armed with my collection of masks appropriate for any well-dressed man created by sister Robyn, Joey the dog and I hit the road before Christmas.

The Lower South is my destination this winter and I plan on being gone nearly four months. Here is the tentative path for this adventure.

Choosing when to travel this time of year is a science as I need to find a window between storms and wind during the dash south.  This is the path that I chose and it worked pretty well. The abrupt turn east was to avoid wind and the direct dash south lead me between snow storms!

The day before I planned to leave Billings four inches of snow fell so I delayed by a day and threaded the needle south to my first stop, Douglas, WY.  The Big Horn Mountains are to my right, cloaked in fresh snow.

While snow was on the ground off and on all the way down to Texas, the roads were dry because this time of the year the earth is still warm so the snow generally melts off the roads (hurrah!)  South of Douglas the winds were proving to be a problem, blowing the Lunch Box all over the road, so I cut east to North Platte, NE so that the wind was blowing from behind me rather than at the side.  The plains are dotted with snow throughout eastern Nebraska.

At North Platte I am far enough from the mountains that the wind is no longer as much of a problem so I head south and dash across the western plains.  The hills of southern Nebraska give way to the rolling plains of western Kansas.

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The prairie is abruptly interrupted in southwestern Oklahoma by Quartzite Mountain, the western edge of the Wichita Mountains, jutting up from the scrub of the surrounding plains. The scale is deceiving due to the flat context of the surrounding land, the tallest point is only around 2,000 feet above sea level.

Further south the Red River Valley forms the border of Oklahoma and Texas and is the heart of the Texas cotton growing region. Most of the harvest has been completed but for some reason one lonely field still stands untouched.

Now our path turns east through eastern Texas.  Past Wichita Falls the rolling prairie gives way to the beginning of the great forest that blankets the eastern United States.  It starts with the thick groves of mesquite of Texas which then give way to taller, deciduous forests of central Louisiana.

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Closer to the eastern border of Louisiana and the Mississippi River, farms have been carved from the blanket of trees.

Finally we reach the Mississippi River, spending the night on the western bank at Vidalia, LA.  The next morning a glowing sun rises above the mighty Mississippi.

The eastern bank of the Mississippi rises abruptly and atop the bluffs is our first stop in the Lower South, “Queen City” of the region, Natchez, MS.

Natchez, MS

Founded by the French in 1716 Natchez is one of the oldest European cities in the Mississippi Valley.  Known as the queen city of the Mississippi River prior to the Civil War, at one time Natchez was second only to New York City as the home of the most millionaires residing in the United States.  Confederate forces surrendered without a fight to the Union Army in September 1862 and as a result the city was spared the destruction experienced by most other major southern cities. The city center today looks much like it did 150 years ago.

This is the view of Natchez looking back east from across the river in Vidalia, Louisiana.  You can see the edge of the city perched above the Mississippi.  The large building on the left is the Natchez Grand Hotel, which sits at the western terminus of the historic Natchez Trace (Main Street).

The downtown area is vibrant with life even in the age of Covid-19 and chock full of well-maintained buildings and residences.  The central city is clustered along Main and Franklin Streets, running parallel from the river bank east before coming together at a historically significant spot, Forks of the Road, which connected to the Natchez Trace, the main route to the east during the early 1800’s.  Forks of the Road was the site of the second largest slave market in the south and operated until 1863.  No trace of the market remains, just a small marker.  A mile to the west is the center of town.  Space is obviously at a premium, even a narrow alley has been pressed into service as an outdoor restaurant!

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Three historic public buildings border the Main Street corridor on the south.

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Also to the south are block after block of historic homes.

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Much like giant colored jewels dangling from a necklace of diamonds, magnificent town mansions decorate the residential blocks just steps from Main Street.  Magnolia Hall, built in 1858, is made of brick covered in plaster and painted to look like stone.  This was a common practice as natural stone for building was not easily available.  Faux painting was used to mimic stonework on walls, marble for fireplace mantles, and other places where decorative stone might be expected.

Cherokee Hall was built in 1844 as a townhome for planter William Stanton.

Stanton later built a new house down the block in 1857 and named it “Belfast”.  In 1890 it was converted the Stanton College for Young Ladies and then converted back to a private home in the early 1900’s and named Stanton Hall.

Choctaw was constructed in 1836 by planter Joseph Neibert.

On the southwestern edge of downtown overlooking the Mississippi is Rosalie, named after Fort Rosalie, which occupied the site in the early days of Natchez.  Both the front (left) and back (right) feature dramatic columns. Rosalie was built in 1820 and was the headquarters of the Union Army under General Walter Gresham when they occupied Natchez towards the end of the Civil War. General Gresham protected the house and its contents during the war.  After the war the house was returned intact to its owners where it remained until 1938 when it was purchased by the Mississippi State Society Daughters of the American Revolution, who maintain the mansion into the present.

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These mansions were not the center of grand estates, they were townhomes for the planters and are in the middle of town, surrounded by smaller homes, many of which are obviously historical but have no particular date of origin posted for the curious tourist!

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And, of course, one can’t leave the Queen of the Mississippi without a picture of a river boat, waiting to cruise up and down the river.

While the French were the first European settlers in the Natchez area, they were not the first inhabitants on the east bank of the Mississippi.  Evidence still remains of their legacy at the eastern edge of Natchez

The Grand Village of the Natchez.

When French explorers reached the area in 1682 they found a relatively peaceful agricultural society ruled by the eldest son of a family known as the “Sun”.  Several explorers wrote detailed reports of their experiences and during the existence of the French colony at Natchez witnessed a number of ceremonies.  The Grand Village actually was not very big and served primarily as a ceremonial center.  The Natchez were an agrarian society and most lived on small family plots out in the surrounding countryside.  The Grand Village clustered around two ceremonial mounds on either end of a flat plaza.  (There was a third mound on the site that had apparently been abandoned some time before the French arrived, they do not mention it in their reports and it no longer exists.)

Temple Mound (Left) has an earthen ramp leading up to the top, where a temple was built that included an “eternal flame.” Across the plaza is the Sun Mound, which was topped with the chief’s house.

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The French witnessed ceremonies marking the deaths of important people and documented their observations.  In 1725 the “Great Sun” died and the ceremony included the strangling of his wives and retainers so that they might accompany him to the afterlife.  Tattooed Serpent, a war chief, died in 1728 and one of the Frenchmen, La Page du Pratz, sketched the ceremony.  The procession with the body started in front of the Sun Mound and then was walked in a circular pattern up the plaza to the Temple Mound, passing on both sides those who were to be killed as part of the funeral.

When a chief died his house was destroyed and buried under a layer of soil, thus raising the height of the mound.  The Natchez Mounds are one of the smaller examples of a mound village in the southeast.

Leaving the banks of the Mississippi we dive deep into dense pine forests as our path now heads southeast to our next destination, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama.

Next up:  The Beach!