Lower Choctaw Boundary

The Lower Choctaw Boundary is a colonial treaty line that crosses the Natchez Trace Parkway at milepost 61.0, where it has divided Hinds and Claiborne counties since Hinds County was formed in 1821. It was established in 1765 between British officials and the Choctaw Nation as the eastern limit of the Natchez District, running south to the 31st parallel and separating the river settlements from Choctaw land. It was first surveyed in 1778, reaffirmed by Spain in 1793, and confirmed by the United States in the Treaty of Fort Adams, signed with the Choctaw on December 17, 1801.

That treaty, negotiated for Thomas Jefferson by James Wilkinson, Benjamin Hawkins and Andrew Pickens, settled two things at once. The Choctaw consented to a wagon road through their lands to the Chickasaw country, which became the improved Natchez Trace, and agreed that the old British line would be retraced and plainly marked. They gave up all claim to the land between that line and the Mississippi River, from the 31st parallel north to the Yazoo, roughly 2.6 million acres. Settlers living beyond the line were to be moved back and their cabins demolished. In return the Choctaw received two thousand dollars in goods and three sets of blacksmith's tools.

The line made a natural place for a stand. Red Bluff Stand opened on the boundary in 1802, and the merchant John Gregg, trading at the line, advertised groceries, ground coffee, sugar, biscuit, cheese, dried beef and bacon to travelers bound through the Choctaw Nation, along with horseshoeing on short notice. For several years it was the last place a northbound traveler could buy provisions.