In Natchez Mississippi, these 5 self guided walking trails take you through historic downtown Natchez Mississippi. Named the Nature Trails, South Trails, North Trails, Bluff Trails and St. Catherine Street Trails all with color coded sidewalk discs to guide you through the trails and markers along the way.
The 1928 Natchez City Directory lists Italian immigrant Sam Anzalone as operating a grocery store at 158-160 St. Catherine Street where he sold gasoline for 21 cents a gallon. Many of the late- nineteenth-century Italian immigrants farmed and sold . . . — — Map (db m114509) HM
. Eliza Smith, an antebellum "free woman of color," purchased property on St. Catherine Street in the 1850s. Her daughters and their families built new houses on the property in the 1880s.28 St. Catherine Street (above) was the ca. 1885 home of . . . — — Map (db m108276) HM
300 North Martin Luther King Street (above) is home to the city's oldest funeral business.Robert D. Mackel (below) opened Bluff City Undertaking in 1898 at the corner of Jefferson and North Rankin Streets. About 1911 he relocated the business to . . . — — Map (db m108600) HM
The Union School (above) was the first public school built by the City of Natchez for African American students. Built in 1871 by contractor P. E. Willman, the Union School was a grand brick edifice which stood at the southeast corner of North . . . — — Map (db m115615) HM
The Richard Wright historic marker recognizes the citys most famous 20th-century writer. Born in 1908 on a cotton plantation near Natchez, Wright spent his early childhood in town in the home of his grandparents at 20 East Woodlawn . . . — — Map (db m87176) HM
When the Spanish laid out the town of Natchez about 1790, they set aside land on the bluff for use as a public park. In 1839, after the city had sold off most of the park and built Broadway Street, writer Joseph Holt Ingraham complained . . . — — Map (db m87177) HM
The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley
Railroad built the passenger station on
the bluff shortly after 1910, and the
Illinois Central Railroad was the last
railroad to own it. Like many smal
towns across America, Natchez lost
passenger . . . — — Map (db m118303) HM
Bontura, built in 1851, was the home of Robert Smith, a free African American who ran the citys most successful carriage business in the 1850s. The house stands at the head of Silver Street, which leads to Natchez Under-the-Hill. Smith . . . — — Map (db m87179) HM
The original appearance of Mt. Sinai Baptist Church is visible in a ca. 1930 historic photograph. The church featured corner towers crowned with domes.Mt. Sinai organized in 1913 and built the church soon afterwards. Like most historic African . . . — — Map (db m108636) HM
Henry Dumas poses on the front steps of 69 St. Catherine Street. Henry managed the Dumas Pharmacy at 707-09 Franklin Street, a building that also housed the medical practice and sanitarium of his brother Dr. Albert W. Dumas, Sr. In 1940 Dr. Dumas . . . — — Map (db m115637) HM
The Dr. John Banks House was built in the Queen Anne style about 1890 and was slightly remodeled in the Colonial Style after about 1905. Frank Robinson, grandson of Dr. John Banks, retired part time to Natchez and restored the house in the . . . — — Map (db m106297) HM
Louis and Anna Alexander resided in the craftsman style cottage (above) at 17 St. Catherine Street.Until his death in the late 1940s, Louis Alexander worked at the historic mansion Melrose for George and Ethel Kelly. He died during a trip to . . . — — Map (db m115953) HM
Pre-Civil War St. Catherine Street The road, for the first mile, after leaving town, passed through a charming country, seen at intervals, and between long lines of unpainted, wretched looking dwellings, occupied as 'groggeries' by free . . . — — Map (db m106918) HM
In 1889 Bishop Thomas Heslin started the first parish for Roman Catholic African Americans in Mississippi. He first oversaw construction of a small frame church (above left) on Beaumont Street and brought Father A.N.J. Peters to Natchez to become . . . — — Map (db m104502) HM
The portion of St. Catherine Street that extends from the site of the Rhythm Night Club to D'Evereux Street was originally part of the property of the city's first public hospital (above).The hospital fronted St. Catherine and stood on a hill on . . . — — Map (db m108586) HM
Myrtle Terrace (behind you) was the home of steamboat captain Thomas P. Leathers, who commanded the steamboat Natchez in a race with the Robert E. Lee in 1870. An internationally known riverboat pilot, Leathers worked for . . . — — Map (db m127107) HM
This 1866 view of High Street shows two houses, but one is no longer standing. The surviving house in the foreground has porches with the kind of sawn wooden railing that is called “gingerbread,” because it looks like the . . . — — Map (db m127099) HM
Joseph Neibert built Choctaw in 1836 as his mansion townhouse. Neibert was a cotton planter. In the 1830s he and his partner Peter Gemmel, operated the city's most successful building firm, which employed both white and enslaved . . . — — Map (db m104476) HM
John Smith, a partner in the contracting firm of Neibert and Gemmell, built this brick cottage in 1838. The John Smith House is named for two owners with this same common name. In this 1866 photograph, evergreen trees obscure the front of . . . — — Map (db m127078) HM
Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church was built in 1858 as the Second Presbyterian Church, a mission of First Presbyterian Church. Zion Chapel acquired the building in 1866, when Hiram R. Revels served as pastor. The . . . — — Map (db m127093) HM
Ethel Clagett and Mabel Porter were among the first women in America to own a car dealership that was not inherited from a male spouse or relative. They opened their dealership in 1914 on Main Street and moved to a larger new facility on . . . — — Map (db m108610) HM
The Protection Steam Fire Company No. 3 built a grand firehouse in 1902 at the corner of Main and Canal streets (no longer standing). During the 1800s and early 1900s, volunteers provided fire protection in Natchez as in most American . . . — — Map (db m127086) HM
The 1927 Eola Hotel is the tallest building in downtown Natchez. Named for Eola Levy, the daughter of developer Isadore Levy, it became a center for social activity for the city. Celebrities who visited the hotel in the mid-1900s . . . — — Map (db m114303) HM
The Natchez Institute, built in 1901,
replaced an 1845 school building. The
Natchez Institute was the first
public school in Mississippi to offer a
full course of free education for white
children. The first public school . . . — — Map (db m127142) HM
An 1890 view of Memorial Park shows the Confederate soldier monument draped for unveiling. Like many others across the south, it faces north towards the opposing army.The park's creation was part of the Lost Cause Movement that expressed . . . — — Map (db m104480) HM
The Old Natchez Post Office was built in 1904 on the site of William Johnson's Main Street barbershop. Before his 1851 death, Johnson also owned two other barbershops in town. He used both freed and enslaved black workers who served only . . . — — Map (db m127074) HM
On this hill, Andrew Ellicott raised the American flag in 1797. This act claimed the Natchez Territory for the United States and helped hasten the departure of the Spanish. A few years later, James Moore built a home on the site, known today as the . . . — — Map (db m114446) HM
The dramatic looking Natchez Hotel (no longer standing) was built in 1891. Within a few years, parts of the building began to disappear in stages. The tent-like dome went first in a storm, and a 1926 fire destroyed most of the structure. . . . — — Map (db m127090) HM
In the 1800s, Franklin Street was
headquarters for plantation supply
houses, and the street was filled with
wagons. Main Street merchants offered
house wares and dry goods, and it
attracted more carriages. Many of the
downtown . . . — — Map (db m199493) HM
Edelweiss is a Swiss Chalet-style building which dates to 1883. The house offered both a great view of the Mississippi River and a convenient location for the family of its first owner, Joseph O'Brien, a coal-dealer at Natchez . . . — — Map (db m108807) HM
William Johnson, a freed person of color, was a barber, entrepreneur, and slave owner. He built this house in 1841 using materials salvaged after the 1840 tornado that damaged much of downtown. His diary details its construction and . . . — — Map (db m115610) HM
Institute Hall was built in 1852-1853 as a public auditorium and a companion building to the Natchez Institute. The contractors were the Weldon Brothers, who used over 100 enslaved craftsmen and whose head draftsman was a slave named . . . — — Map (db m115628) HM
The domed Federal-style Adams County Courthouse appears in Audubon's 1822-1823 painted landscape of Natchez. Built in 1817, this courthouse is the oldest in Mississippi. It was remodeled in 1925. Actions at the courthouse impacted all of . . . — — Map (db m114502) HM
The present Temple B'nai Israel, built in 1904, replaced an 1870s temple that burned (pictured above). Both reflect the success of Jewish merchants after the Civil War. Jews lived in Natchez as early as the late 1700s, but their numbers . . . — — Map (db m114299) HM
An 1866 photograph shows that the porch on the house at 705 Washington Street (behind you) was a later addition. Those who built houses without porches often soon added them. Travel writer Joseph Holt Ingraham noted in 1835 that the area's hot . . . — — Map (db m115604) HM
The two matching brick houses at the corner (behind you) date to 1901 and stand on the site of a brick chapel (no longer standing) built in 1849 by the First Presbyterian Church. The chapel held Wednesday evening prayer services, . . . — — Map (db m107249) HM
Gathered on the front steps of Green Leaves are the founders of the Natchez Garden Club, the women who started the local historic house tours in 1932. The vision of these women created the city's heritage tourism industry, today a major . . . — — Map (db m115605) HM
All four of the houses at this intersection were built before the Civil War, and three are associated with the family of Joseph Quegles, a Spaniard who settled in Natchez during the Spanish period (1779-1798).Four houses near the . . . — — Map (db m114301) HM
Known as the Spanish Quarter in the early 1800s, this neighborhood is one of the oldest in Natchez. Each corner house dates to before the Civil War.
A Spaniard, Manuel Texada, built the house called Texada . . . — — Map (db m127092) HM
John R. Lynch turned to writing in his later years and wrote the Facts of Reconstruction in 1913. He completed his autobiography Reminiscences of an Active Life when he was 90, two years before his death in 1939.Lynch invested . . . — — Map (db m115927) HM
The photograph of the 1946 Brumfield High School Choral. Club, taken in the front yard of Brumfield, provides the best image of the Louis Winston House on the left. The house unfortunately burned in the 1990s. The house on the right, which still . . . — — Map (db m114661) HM
Alexander Lightfoot "Papa George" Papa George Lightfoot [1924-1971], he lived down the street from the alley I came up in, down on St. Catherine Street....He was a hustler, he had a snowball wagon, he sold peanuts. He would blow his harp . . . — — Map (db m108160) HM
The Harper family mansion had a spectacular view of the river from the bluff. The construction of the railroad and related development made its land valuable for commerce, and the house and its garden were destroyed to build a large warehouse (no . . . — — Map (db m104673) HM
The Deacons for Defense and Justice armed themselves in self-defense as a response to the attempted murder of local NAACP president George Metcalfe, whose car was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965. The first meeting of the Natchez Deacons was . . . — — Map (db m116326) HM
The National Guard patrolled St. Catherine Street on September 3, 1965, not long after the August 27 bombing that nearly killed George Metcalfe, president of the local chapter of the Natchez Association for the Advancement of Colored People . . . — — Map (db m115639) HM
On May 8, 1840, one of the deadliest tornadoes in American history struck Natchez and killed about 300 people. Most of the dead were boatmen and passengers on steamboats docked at the waterfront. The city was already suffering from the economic . . . — — Map (db m143132) HM
For most of the 1800s, the prime mover of commerce and passengers on the Mississippi River was the steamboat, which was invented by Robert Fulton in 1807. The combination of the steamboat, the cotton gin, and improved strains of cotton . . . — — Map (db m143122) HM
The Spanish built Silver Street about 1790 to connect the town to the riverfront below. In the 1800s, Natchez Under-the-Hill was a major port on the Mississippi River. Natchez exported and imported agricultural goods, with cotton being . . . — — Map (db m127108) HM
Ida McGuire Gillespie (left) and Odille Angelety grew up across the street from each other on St. Catherine Street and were lifelong friends. Odille never married and had a long distinguished career as a teacher at nearby Brumfield High School. An . . . — — Map (db m114291) HM
Venomous Snakes of Adams County Venomous Snakes of Adams County Watch where you walk! Adams County is home to five species of venomous snakes: the Copperhead, Eastern Cottonmouth, Eastern Coral Snake, and the Canebrake and Pygmy Rattlesnakes. . . . — — Map (db m114651)
John J. Nosser, Mayor of Natchez from 1962 to 1968, was born in Lebanon in 1899 and immigrated to the United States in 1919. Mississippi welcomed a number of Lebanese immigrants who became some of the most successful businessmen in their . . . — — Map (db m114458) HM
Seamstress Laura Davis made the lavish dress and train worn by Cassell Carpenter when she was Pilgrimage Garden Club Queen in 1966. Carpenter posed in the parlor of her home Dunleith for local photographer Mabel Lane, the city's most popular . . . — — Map (db m115935) HM
The will of William Barland, a wealthy planter and downtown property owner, disclosed an interesting domestic relationship that has long intrigued historians. Proven in 1816, the will legally acknowledged Barland's relationship with "friend and . . . — — Map (db m115928) HM
Pictured (left to right) are the Stallone sons, Hugo, Serviglio, Premo, and Meno. All of the sons worked on St. Catherine Street. Hugo operated a grocery store, where his brother Serviglio also worked. Premo opened a plumbing and electrical . . . — — Map (db m115624) HM
Photographer Earl Norman stood on Jefferson Street and snapped this view of the intersection of St. Catherine, Martin Luther King and Jefferson streets.A single column of the portico of Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church appears on the far right. Holy . . . — — Map (db m108599) HM
Axel Voss spoke little English when he emigrated in 1925 from Copenhagen, Denmark. He worked as a mechanic for Chris Anderson and John T. Belt, who founded A-B Motor Company in a backyard garage at 114 St. Catherine. The first Voss business venture . . . — — Map (db m103882) HM
Lettie Stanton, most likely born into slavery and possibly at Brandon Hall, had a stable relationship with cotton planter William Page, who never married anyone else and fathered her two daughters, heirs to the Page estate.Margaret Page, daughter of . . . — — Map (db m114292) HM
Henry Gurney photographed Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church in 1866, the year the congregation bought the building built in 1858 as the Second Presbyterian Church. Zion Chapel had earlier purchased the Methodist Church that fronted Union Street between . . . — — Map (db m110513) HM