Travel Blog

I'm going to write about our stay in Natchez, Mississippi, sort of backwards. Today's blog will focus on the town, and tomorrow's will focus on our campground and surrounding attractions.

We started out heading right for the Natchez Visitor Center so they could tell us a bit more about the town.

The place was really nice, and there was a lot of historical information in there. I'm going to be really honest and let you know I did not stand around and read everything there was to read (mainly because there was a big tour group in there encroaching upon my personal space), but I read enough to get excited about walking around to see the big houses all the millionaires had built. (According to Road Trip USA, by Jamie Jensen, prior to the Civil War, Natchez had the most millionaires per capita in the U.S., and most of the antebellum homes are still standing because Natchez surrendered to Grant's army with nary a fight.

So we picked up a walking tour map and headed off. The first big old house we came to was called Rosalie.

Rosalie was built for a cotton mogul in 1823. It sits on a portion of the site of the Natchez Indians massacre of the French in 1729 at Fort Rosalie. And in 1863, General Grant took it over to be his headquarters. It's owned by the Mississippi DAR now, and is open for tours. We didn't go inside because we're cheap, but it was nice to look at from the outside.

Right in the area of Rosalie is Fat Mamas Tamales, which we read had really good food. It was pretty early in the day, so we didn't try its fare, but it looked like a nice place. There's a picture of it running at the top of the page today, but if you're reading this tomorrow, don't go looking for it.

We walked for a bit more and came to Stanton Hall.

This one was built in 1857 for (wait for it) cotton magnate Frederick Stanton. As it seems for all the poor bastards who had these homes built, old Freddy died two years later, so he didn't even get to enjoy the place. But his family lived there until 1894. I think I read it was a college for a little while after that, but a google search to confirm that proved fruitless.

Here's me in front of Stanton Hall to give you and idea of how huge this place is:

Then we walked to get coffee, and we saw another mansion or two, but nothing that made us shiver with excitement (we only had shivers for coffee at that point). When we had caffeined-up, we went up to a church that also serves as great showroom for Natchez in Historic Photographs. There were over 500 old photographs of Natchez dating as far back as 1840. Very cool, and worth a look if you're in town.

On our way back to the Visitor Center and the end of the walk, we passed City Hall and some other municipal buildings that normally I wouldn't mention expcept for this being out if front of one of them:

I looked this up online and read on The Natchez Democrat Online that Tripod showed up at City Hall one day in 1979 and the workers there started to feed him scraps. He had three legs and no teeth, but won over everyone at City Hall, who let him live there from then on. One politician who was allergic to cats actually almost ended up losing his seat when he tried to get Tripod removed from City Hall. He died of an undisclosed illness in 1983, but from what I've read, he left a pretty indelible impression on everyone who met him. Neat story.

And that takes us to our last leg (pun intened) of the tour, which took us by the Mississippi River. The riverboat in the following picture is a casino now, and doesn't go anywhere, but it looks for the picture.

And so ends our tour of Natchez. I will be posting another blog soon with the other things we saw in the area, so stay tuned.