The marker at US 82 and Natchez Trace Road in Mathiston was set up in January 1933 by the Mississippi Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, one of the markers the society placed along the old road county by county. The National Park Service's administrative history of the parkway traces the parkway's political beginning to the dedication speeches for those markers, and counts the address at Mathiston by Thomas L. Bailey, then Speaker of the Mississippi House and later governor, as the most significant of them. Ned Lee, editor of the Webster Progress, was in the audience and became interested. Lee suggested that Jim Walton, whom the history describes as an itinerant piano tuner, amateur journalist, self-styled colonel and International Hobo, write about the Trace.
Walton's column, Bits and Tidbits, went over well locally. In August 1933 he called on Congressman Jeff Busby at Houston and suggested a bill for a survey of the old road, frankly doubting it would pass but thinking it a pleasing gesture to the ladies of the DAR.
Walton then named himself organizing director of an association that did not yet exist and called a meeting in Jackson for 10 and 11 January 1934, promising a banquet and a grand march led by Senator Pat Harrison and the actress Tallulah Bankhead. The celebrities did not appear, but every county on the Trace sent people, and the state legislature passed a joint resolution asking Congress to pave the old road. The marker's inscription notes that Webster County is named for Daniel Webster.
Getting there
33.5407, -89.1315
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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