Jackson's Military Road was a 19th-century route connecting Nashville, Tennessee, with New Orleans, Louisiana. After the War of 1812, Congress appropriated funds in 1816 to build and improve this road. It was completed in 1820. The road was named for then General Andrew Jackson, hero of the United States victory at the Battle of New Orleans against British forces.
The appropriation for Jackson's Military Road was made on April 24, 1816:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the sum of ten thousand dollars be and are hereby appropriated, and payable out of any moneys in the treasury not otherwise appropriated for the purpose of repairing and keeping in repair the road between Columbia on Duck River in the state of Tennessee, and Madisonville in the state of Louisiana, by the Choctaw Agency, and also the road between Fort Hawkins, in the state of Georgia, and Fort Stoddard, under the direction of the Secretary of War. [1]
On September 24, 1816, William H. Crawford, Secretary of War, informed General Andrew Jackson, then commanding the Army district at Nashville, of the appropriation, and directing that $5,000 be spent on the road to Louisiana. He noted that "I have received no information of the length of this road, the nature of the country through which it passes, or its present state. If there are many bridges to be erected the appropriation will be inadequate to the object. In that event the employment of a part of the troops may become necessary." [2]
Jackson was officially in charge of the entire construction, including the First and Eighth Infantry and the artillery detachment who supplied the labor. However, his subordinates directly supervised much of the construction. Captain H. Young surveyed the route, completing this task by June 1817. They found that bridges were needed, and Congress appropriated an additional $5,000 in March 1818. Major Perrin Willis took command of the construction gang, then numbering about fifty, in April 1819, when the road reached the Pearl River. The road was completed in May 1820, after 75,801 man-days of labor.
The Tuscumbian of Tuscumbia, Alabama, printed a description of "General Jackson's Military Road" on November 12, 1824. It states its length at 436 miles (Nashville to Madisonville) or 516 miles (Nashville to New Orleans), 200 miles (320 km) shorter than the historic Natchez Trace. The article describes the construction gang as averaging 300, "including sawyers, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc." The road included 35 bridges and 20,000 feet (6,100 m) of causeway, particularly through the swamps of Noxubee County, Mississippi.
From Columbia, Tennessee, the Military Road passed through Lawrenceburg and crossed the Tennessee River at Florence, Alabama. Byler Road branched off of the Military Road in Lauderdale County, Alabama. [3] The road then intersected the Gaines Trace at Russellville, Alabama (where it still exists as Jackson Avenue). It cut cross-country through what was the territory of the Choctaw Nation, in what later developed as the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
In Hamilton, Alabama, "Military Street" marks the route of the Military Road. The road crossed the Tombigbee River in Columbus, Mississippi; the route still exists in that town and still bears the name "Military Road" from the Alabama border to downtown. West of the Tombigbee, the road passed through lands later assigned to Lowndes, Noxubee, Kemper, Newton, Jasper, Jones, Marion, and Pearl River counties, before crossing into Louisiana at the Pearl River twenty miles (32 km) west of today's Poplarville, Mississippi. The road continued directly from the future site of Bogalusa, Louisiana, to Madisonville, Louisiana, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. [4]
Jackson's Military Road declined in importance in the 1840s due to disrepair and the difficulty of keeping it passable through the swamps of the Noxubee River. It was largely replaced by the Robinson Road. (Available information about Robinson Road is scant, but it apparently linked Columbus, Mississippi, and Jackson, the city which was designated in the early 1820s as Mississippi's capital.) [4]
The route later became part of the Jackson Highway.
Clarke County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 23,087. The county seat is Grove Hill. The county's largest city is Jackson. The county was created by the legislature of the Mississippi Territory in 1812. It is named in honor of General John Clarke of Georgia, who was later elected governor of that state.
Russellville is a city in Franklin County in the U.S. state of Alabama. At the 2020 census, the population of the city was 10,855, up from 9,830 at the 2010 census. The city is the county seat of Franklin County.
Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, on the eastern border of Mississippi, United States, located primarily east, but also north and northeast of the Tombigbee River, which is also part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. It is approximately 146 miles (235 km) northeast of Jackson, 92 miles (148 km) north of Meridian, 63 miles (101 km) south of Tupelo, 60 miles (97 km) northwest of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and 120 miles (193 km) west of Birmingham, Alabama.
Macon is a city in Noxubee County, Mississippi along the Noxubee River. The population was 2,768 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Noxubee County.
Pinckney's Treaty, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo or the Treaty of Madrid, was signed on October 27, 1795, by the United States and Spain.
The Natchez Trace, also known as the Old Natchez Trace, is a historic forest trail within the United States which extends roughly 440 miles (710 km) from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, linking the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers.
U.S. Route 11 or U.S. Highway 11 (US 11) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway extending 1,645 miles (2,647 km) across the eastern U.S. The southern terminus of the route is at US 90 in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in eastern New Orleans, Louisiana. The northern terminus is at the Rouses Point–Lacolle 223 Border Crossing in Rouses Point, New York. The route continues across the border into Canada as Route 223. US 11, created in 1926, maintains most of its original route. The route north of Knoxville, Tennessee, follows a route similar to Interstate 81 (I-81). While it is signed as a north–south route, it physically travels in a northeast–southwest direction.
The Natchez Trace Parkway is a limited-access national parkway in the Southeastern United States that commemorates the historic Natchez Trace and preserves sections of that original trail. Its central feature is a two-lane road that extends 444 miles (715 km) from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. Access to the parkway is limited, with more than 50 access points in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. The southern end of the route is in Natchez at its intersection with Liberty Road, and the northern end is northeast of Fairview, Tennessee, in the suburban community of Pasquo, at an intersection with Tennessee State Route 100. In addition to Natchez and Nashville, larger cities along the route include Jackson and Tupelo, Mississippi, and Florence, Alabama.
The Tombigbee River is a tributary of the Mobile River, approximately 200 mi (325 km) long, in the U.S. states of Mississippi and Alabama. Together with the Alabama, it merges to form the short Mobile River before the latter empties into Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. The Tombigbee watershed encompasses much of the rural coastal plain of western Alabama and northeastern Mississippi, flowing generally southward. The river provides one of the principal routes of commercial navigation in the southern United States, as it is navigable along much of its length through locks and connected in its upper reaches to the Tennessee River via the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
The Tennessee Valley is the drainage basin of the Tennessee River and is largely within the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches from southwest Kentucky to north Alabama and from northeast Mississippi to the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The border of the valley is known as the Tennessee Valley Divide. The Tennessee Valley contributes greatly to the formation of Tennessee's three legally recognized sectors.
The Gaines Trace was a road in the Mississippi Territory. It was constructed in 1811 and 1812 from the Tennessee River to Cotton Gin Port on the upper Tombigbee River and on to Fort Stoddert on the lower Tombigbee. The portion from the Tennessee River to Cotton Gin Port was surveyed in 1807 and 1808 by Edmund P. Gaines, the road's namesake and a career United States Army officer.
The Noxubee River (NAHKS-uh-bee) is a tributary of the Tombigbee River, about 90.6 miles (145.8 km) long, in east-central Mississippi and west-central Alabama in the United States. Via the Tombigbee, it is part of the watershed of the Mobile River, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Tombigbee District, also known as the Tombigbee, was one of two areas, the other being the Natchez District, that were the first in what was West Florida to be colonized by British subjects from the Thirteen Colonies and elsewhere. This later became the Mississippi Territory as part of the United States. The district was also the first area to be opened to white settlement in what would become the state of Alabama, outside of the French colonial outpost of Mobile on the Gulf Coast. The Tombigbee and Natchez districts were the only areas populated by whites in the Mississippi Territory when it was formed by the United States in 1798.
Simon Favre was an interpreter of the Muskogean languages, particularly Choctaw and Chickasaw, for the French, British, Spanish and Americans in the part of West Florida that became part of the states of Mississippi and Alabama. The son of another prominent interpreter, Favre spent the late 18th century in the vicinity of Mobile and the Tombigbee River, which changed hands from French to British, and then Spanish control. He became well versed in the language and culture of the Choctaws, and was involved with several treaties between the Europeans and natives. As a young man he had a Choctaw mistress with whom he had six known children, then at the age of 41 he was legally married in Mobile to a woman of European descent. Within a few years of his marriage, he moved with his new family from the Tombigbee area to a plantation on the Pearl River.
Agency is a ghost town located in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, United States.
Bigbee Valley is an unincorporated community in Noxubee County, Mississippi, United States. Variant names are "Bigbeevale", "Nances Mill", and "Whitehall".
Fort Stonewall was a fort built by the state of Alabama in 1862 in present-day Clarke County, Alabama, during the American Civil War. Fort Stonewall was constructed on the Alabama River by enslaved Africans to protect the interior of Alabama in the event that Mobile was captured by Union forces. Additional forts were concurrently constructed to defend against Union advances up the Tombigbee River and to protect nearby salt works. The fort never saw any military action and was destroyed at the close of the American Civil War. Earthworks and a cannon are all that exist at the site today, which is located on private property.
Interstate 59 (I-59) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs 445.23 miles (716.53 km) from Slidell, Louisiana, to just outside of Wildwood, Georgia. In the U.S. state of Mississippi, I-59 travels 171.72 miles (276.36 km) from the Louisiana state line south of Nicholson northward to the Alabama state line northeast of the city of Meridian. Other cities it connects to include Picayune, Hattiesburg, and Laurel. Outside of these cities, however, I-59 is a largely rural road, providing access to other civilized areas via U.S. and state highways. Continuing from Louisiana, I-59 parallels and even shares a few concurrencies with the older U.S. Route 11 corridor for its entire route, and it has largely supplanted that route as a major highway for long-haul traffic. At Meridian, I-59 meets I-20, and the two routes are cosigned for the remainder of their length through the state.
General Carroll's Road was a north-south route through Louisiana and territorial-era lower Mississippi in early 19th-century North America. The road connected Lake Pontchartrain to the Choctaw Agency, which was located about five miles north of present-day Jackson, Mississippi. The route was named after William Carroll, and followed an existing route between Madisonville, Louisiana, and Liberty, Mississippi, but the last 125 miles were "blazed out" as a way to get Carroll's men back from the Battle of New Orleans while avoiding Natchez, Mississippi. Once they reached the Choctaw Agency it was a straight shot back up the Natchez Trace to Tennessee. Also known as Carroll's Trace, a fragment was still visible in Copiah County as of 1974. The road was never heavily used even its frontier heyday because its original purpose of getting Carroll's men home meant they "paid no attention to grades and stream crossings. The Trace goes up and down hills with a 30-degree slope, and it crosses Lick Creek where no road could ever be built to last." Because the roads radiating from Madisonville, on the Tchefuncte River, were also intersected by the east-west General Wilkinson's Road, the town became an important start and end point for travels through what settlers called the "wilderness."
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