Meriwether Lewis: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Natchez Trace Parkway, National Park Service

Susan, Hitchcock

The Meriwether Lewis Monument is a component landscape in Lewis County, Tennessee, seven miles east of the county seat of Hohenwald and seventy miles southwest of Nashville. The 300 acre site is located along the historic Natchez Trace at the burial site of Meriwether Lewis, today part of the Natchez Trace Parkway (Milepost 385.9, Section 1-E). The site is bounded by the parkway to the east and south, Tennessee Highway 20 to the west, and buffered by second growth forest to the north. The site memorializes the co-captain of the expedition to the Pacific Ocean and his burial. The centerpiece of the Meriwether Lewis site is a commemorative landscape designed by the National Park Service in the 1930s (Park Development Era). A maintenance complex, picnic area, and hiking trails are within the component landscape boundaries, while a campground, overlook, picnic area, and park housing border the historic core. The Meriwether Lewis tract of the Natchez Trace Parkway extends to the north and east of the component landscape. The Grinder’s Inn operated along the Old Natchez Trace, a nationally significant route used first by migrating animals, later by the Chickasaw and Choctaw, and during the eighteenth century, as the overland path from the Mississippi River to Nashville. Meriwether Lewis stopped at Grinder’s Inn on October 10, 1809 and died the following morning. Historians suggest he committed suicide, while local lore maintains he was murdered. Lewis was buried at the site. Few landscape features remain from this historic period, though the configuration of the inn, spring, road trace, and burial remain intact. The monument erected in 1848 marks the site of Meriwether Lewis’ burial with a broken column atop an engraved plinth supported by a rough-hewn stone pyramid. In 1856, land around the monument became a local cemetery. The road trace and spring were incorporated into park development in the twentieth century. The cemetery (Pioneer Cemetery) surrounds the monument in a level, grassy ellipse enclosed by a loop tour road. The War Department administered the site from 1925-1933 and designed the formal space around the monument. The poorly-maintained gravestones were replaced in 1927 with flush marble markers. The War Department added interpretive tablets to the landscape and removed a dilapidated iron fence around the monument. The period of significance for the site (1925-1948) includes this landscape design and the improvements made by the National Park Service. During the NPS Park Development Era, the road system was improved and the ellipse was graded and filled. The change in topography prompted the resetting of the cemetery stones and covered a portion of the old Natchez trace. A log office-museum built in 1935 resides near the site of the Grinder’s Inn and the nearby parking lot and drinking fountain (1935) remain unchanged. The Natchez road trace was delineated during the 1930s to the north and south of the memorial ellipse. The current tour road loop encircling the monument and cemetery preserve the simple landscape designed to commemorate Lewis. The extant entrance road built during the period of significance creates a vista along an axis to the monument. The Old Spring picnic area remains an intact recreational site on a loop road spur east of the campground road. The picnic area includes scattered picnic tables, grills, and trash cans located near the local spring. Stone culverts and drainage ditches remain from the original 1935 design and the site links to the trail network. Besides the Old Spring picnic area, maintenance buildings and a residence were added in 1935 and remain in use today. Outside of the historic landscape, a campground and an additional picnic area exist as the park road continues. These areas and two overlooks were completed in 1960. The Mission 66 development includes two comfort stations, the Little Swan picnic area, the campground, and park housing (that has since been removed).

Meriwether Lewis: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Natchez Trace Parkway, National Park Service

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