Natchez Through New Eyes
One night in a city both proper and improper
Almost a year ago, I was excitedly preparing to embark on a spontaneous Parisian adventure when my mom pointed out over the green, flowering fields stretching beyond the wooden fence around our house in South Louisiana. “When you are looking up at all the ancient and modern wonders of Europe,” she said, “remember that you come from a place with its own kind of beauty.” I told this story to my boyfriend Julien as we drove through the gently rolling hills of the Felicianas on our way to Natchez, our weekend of much-needed escape and exploration unfolding with sunset shades of burnt orange and pink over green fields and forests.
We were welcomed into town by the famous Natchez bluffs, an impressive wall of greenery that seems to plummet right into the Mississippi. After finding a place to park along its ridge, we wandered along for only a few feet before we came across stairs and made our way to the bottom of the bluff. The trail was a portion of the Natchez Bluff Trail, a walking path flanked on one side by the wall of earth and on the other by a slanted forest that seemed to be pouring itself into the great river. We settled ourselves in a clearing, perfect for soaking in the famed Natchez sunset, and watched a barge pass in front of us—a testament to a familiar legacy of the cotton empire and the cultural, economic, and spiritual exchange carried out over, across, and through the Mississippi River.
Just before we lost light, Julien and I climbed back up to the car to go check into our room at the Clermont Bluffs Bed and Breakfast (42 Cemetery Road), a Victorian-era cottage set among live oaks and greenery, across from the Natchez National Cemetery. Our host Troy Bickford (and his two small dogs) greeted us on the front porch. After settling into our room, we met Troy in the elegantly furnished parlor area to write down his recommendations.
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Taking his advice, we set out for a late supper at King’s Tavern (613 Jefferson Street), said to be the oldest standing building in the Mississippi Territory circa 1789, and celebrated for its one-of-a-kind cocktail menu, developed by spirit artisan Ricky Woolfolk, who collects special liquors from all over the world to blend with his own homemade fruit infusions, bitters, and other mixers. With two of those hand-crafted cocktails in hand, Julien settled in with me at a table in the corner of the cozy, tavern-esque room.
With crumbly brick walls and low ceilings, the warm, dark ambience of the place conjured ghosts of joviality and mischief, locals gathering after a long day of work belting out drinking songs and slamming mugs on the counter. On this particular night, though, we enjoyed the quiet luxury of having the space mostly to ourselves—that is, until the door opened and our host Troy entered. After a little bartop banter with him, his friend, and Woolfolk, and filling up on flatbread and pot pie, we re-entered the quiet streets of Natchez and turned inevitably towards the ever-present bluff.
We drove down Silver Street, and I mean down—down under the hill and to the river, to what many once called “Natchez Improper.” Even today, the further you go down the small slope, the more the night shifts from quiet stillness to bustling, loud life. Then as now, it all culminates at the Under-the-Hill Saloon (25 Silver Street), one of the sole remaining monuments of the nineteenth-century Natchez underworld. Inside, a band playing keening and rowdy western ballads provided the backdrop for a few couples maneuvering clumsily in between tables, twirling here, stumbling there. We settled in at the bar and ordered drinks from a bartender wearing Nike shorts who looked to be in her 70s and who jigged back and forth across the length of the bar while she poured generous doses of our individual weaknesses mixed with splashes of Coke. An old man with a mustache tickling his shoulders wore a top hat and sipped on his highball at a corner table. A cluster of leather-clad, tattooed men laughed with a cop at the other end of the bar.
Read this: Favorite Place to Take a Visitor: Under-the-Hill Saloon in Natchez.]
A younger couple told us that they were on a motorcycle trip down the Natchez Trace, the Native American trade artery turned early colonial road that now hosts hikers and explorers. They were supposed to return home tonight but found themselves tempted by the bluff and booked a room in the Saloon’s adjacent bed and breakfast, the Mark Twain Guest House, with only the clothes on their backs. They asked if we knew the story behind the crumpled dollar bills stuck to the ceiling. Shaking our heads, we motioned to the bartender, who told us that, per tradition, people roll dollar bills around a quarter and stick a thumbtack through the top. Then they try to get it to stick to the ceiling. At the end of the year, the Saloon gathers the lot to host a community crawfish boil. As we started pulling out our change and bills, she stopped us to say that the practice has been banned in the dark. We then all began to theorize about the kind of tragedy that resulted in such a rule.
Even today, the further you go down the small slope, the more the night shifts from quiet stillness to bustling, loud life.
Still not ready to head home, we made one last stop at the aptly named The Corner Bar (201 State Street) a few streets over. In less than ten minutes, a cast of regulars introduced themselves. One of the women took my hand and led me to a back room arranged with handcrafted goods, baskets full of barbecue-themed treasures, a Yeti ice chest, and more. It was a silent auction they were hosting that Saturday, she explained. Their friend had just been diagnosed with cancer. I regretfully told her we wouldn’t be in town, but both Julien and I bought raffle tickets for one of the many handmade goods, even though most had “Mississippi” painted somewhere on them. Finally, exhausted, we returned to our grand little abode to settle in for the night.
In the morning, the smells of frying potatoes and coffee made their way up the staircase and dragged us both out of bed. Energized by Troy’s delicious Southwestern breakfast, our first stop of the day was Magnolia Hall (215 South Pearl Street), a mansion built in the Greek Revival style in 1858. Helen Smith of the Natchez Garden Club met us for a private tour, explaining the ongoing renovations to the historic landmark. One of these is the somewhat controversial decision to paint the entire home brown, which historians and paint analysis have determined was the original color of the building. Smith said that most restorations today emphasize beauty over authenticity. The Garden Club wanted to do something different. To raise money for these renovations, they host regular events, including a luncheon to happen later that very day that saw Country Roads’ Jennie Guido and her mother hard at work in the historic home’s kitchens.
Before we left, Helen recommended we drive out to the local Old South Winery (65 South Concord Avenue), owned by her friend’s family. At the front desk we met Scotty Galbreath, grandson of the winery’s founder Scott Galbreath. He gave us the tour, showing us a backroom crowded with all the indecipherable mechanics necessary to produce wine from Mississippi-grown muscadines and a large closet-like space housing enormous stainless-steel casks in which gallons of wine sat aging. After sampling all nine varieties, we happily departed with two bottles each.
In Natchez, there are a plethora of mansions and plantations to tour, but time forced us to pick one. It is difficult not to be awestruck by the magnitude of Longwood Plantation (140 Lower Woodville Road). Haller Nutt’s Oriental Revival style palace is the largest octagonal home in the United States. Designed to evoke wealth and majesty, from the outside the structure symbolizes the era of the plantation owner, the epitome of the American South’s legacy. The inside, atop the basement where Nutt and his family lived during the home’s construction, reveals the barren fate of that legacy. During the Civil War, Nutt lost his entire fortune and died shortly after, leaving his family nothing but an unfinished mansion. A descendant of his donated it to the city of Natchez, so long as it remained unfinished, as an enduring symbol of “what the Civil War did to the South.”
[Also read: Mississippi History Along the Natchez Trace]
Of course, the legacy of the South and of Natchez is more than simply the stories of the cotton kingdoms, and the greatest tragedies were not the tales of lost wealth or families abandoned in empty mansions. Natchez was the most active slave trading city in Mississippi. At the intersection of St. Catherine Street and Liberty Road, we stopped at Forks of the Road (232 Saint Catherine Street), the monument to what was once one of the largest slave markets in the country. Bare in presentation, a series of signs tells the story of the slave trade accompanied by unsettling newspaper clippings advertising the sale of human beings. The monument itself, a circle of concrete holding down iron shackles, stands as a stark and shameful remnant of what was once a place of bustling commerce and exploitation.
With rumbling bellies we decided to end our journey back at the river, and landed at the Magnolia Grill (49 Silver Street), recommended by Troy. We splurged on fried green tomatoes and barbecued shrimp, only to find our overflowing plates impossible to finish, our bodies finally making a statement against the richness of our weekend indulgences. Of course we were more than happy to bring a taste of Natchez back home with us in styrofoam boxes.
On our way out, I told Julien we had to make one more stop. You can’t go to a place with a cafe called Steampunk Coffee Roasters without grabbing a latte. Sipping on superb chai and French vanilla, we bade farewell to Natchez for now.
This article originally appeared in our May 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.