Three detachments of Cherokee removed from their homeland in 1838 went down the Tennessee River by boat past the point where the Natchez Trace Parkway now crosses on the John Coffee Memorial Bridge, and the Park Service marks the reach with its Trail of Tears Water Route Overlook on the north bank. The first two parties could not take their boats down the Muscle Shoals, so they were landed at Decatur, carried by railroad to Tuscumbia, and put back on the water below the shoals, on the reach the parkway crosses.
Lieutenant Edward Deas's party left present-day Chattanooga on 6 June 1838, rode the train from Decatur to Tuscumbia between 9 and 11 June, and reached Fort Coffee on 19 June with no deaths recorded on the way. Lieutenant R. H. K. Whiteley's detachment, which started on 13 June, took the same railroad on 21 June; its boat later grounded in Arkansas, Whiteley hired 23 wagons, and he recorded 70 deaths before the party disbanded on 5 August. The last, under John Drew, boarded flatboats on 5 December with 219 people and reached Tahlequah on 18 March 1839.
Not every Cherokee party on this ground travelled by water. The Drane detachment crossed the line of the parkway on foot a few miles north of the river, bound for boats at Waterloo, downstream.
Getting there
34.8385, -87.9270
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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