About Natchez National Historical Park
Natchez National Historical Park was authorized by Congress on October 7, 1988, to interpret the history of Natchez, Mississippi, a river town founded by the French in 1716 that, before the Civil War, was home to some of the wealthiest cotton planters in the United States. The park is not one place but four. Melrose, about two miles southeast of downtown, is a Greek Revival estate built in the 1840s for John T. McMurran, a lawyer, state senator, and planter, where the family lived alongside 22 enslaved people; it is a National Historic Landmark. The William Johnson House at 210 State Street, added to the park on September 28, 1990, was the home of a barber born into slavery and freed at age 11 who became a successful businessman with barbershops, rental property, a farm, and timberland, and whose detailed diary of antebellum life has been published.
Fort Rosalie preserves the site of the fortification the French built among the Natchez people on the river bluff in 1716, later held in turn by Britain, Spain, and the United States and briefly the capital of the Mississippi Territory. The newest unit, Forks of the Road, opened on June 18, 2021, at the site of the second-largest slave market in the Deep South, active from 1832 to 1863. Together the four sites cover European settlement, African enslavement, the cotton economy, and the long struggle for civil rights, which the Park Service sums up as "the richest history on the Mississippi River."
Collections and Research Services
Melrose is furnished with original 19th-century pieces collected from Natchez-area families, including the McMurrans: painted floor cloths, mahogany furniture, a punkah fan over the dining table, a Rococo Revival parlor suite, Gothic Revival dining chairs, and bookcases holding volumes from the 18th century. The slave quarters behind the house interpret the lives of the enslaved household. The William Johnson House displays artifacts from Johnson's household and archaeological finds from the park, and his published diary is one of the most important first-person records of a free Black businessman in the antebellum South. The park does not operate a public research library; for family lines in Adams County, see our guides to free family history research and finding where someone is buried.
Planning Your Visit
Allow about four hours to see the park. Melrose grounds and outbuildings are free and open daily 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; guided tours of the mansion are offered at 10 and 11 a.m. and 2, 3, and 4 p.m., cost $11 per person (ages 17 and under free), and require reservations through Recreation.gov. The William Johnson House is open daily 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the first-floor visitor center and exhibit hall open and the second floor closed. Fort Rosalie and Forks of the Road are open daily from sunup to sundown. All sites close on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. The Natchez Visitor Center was closed for interior rehabilitation at the time of writing, with visitor services available from VisitNatchez at 500 Main Street. No flash photography is permitted indoors, and summers are hot and humid with mosquitoes and ticks common from spring into fall. Park headquarters is at 640 South Canal Street, Suite E, Natchez, MS 39120; call (601) 446-5790 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. for group reservations. Check nps.gov/natc for fee-free days and current conditions.
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