Witch Dance, a picnic area and trailhead on the Natchez Trace Parkway east of Houston in Chickasaw County, takes its name from a legend. Witches are said to have gathered in the woods for their ceremonies, and wherever their feet touched the ground the grass withered and never grew again. The National Park Service tells it as local folklore handed down through generations and gives no date or source for the name. A second story has been grafted on to the first, in which the outlaw Micajah Harpe, known as Big Harpe, was shown the bare patches by a guide, laughed at the tale, and leapt from one patch to the next daring the witches to come out and face him.
No contemporary record places the Harpes at Witch Dance. The documented end of Big Harpe came in Kentucky, where a posse ran him down on 24 August 1799 and set his head up at a crossroads known as Harpe's Head. The woods around Witch Dance have a documented history of their own. They were part of the Natchez Trace Land Utilization Project, land bought by the federal government under New Deal laws of 1933 to 1937, and on 27 November 1959 President Eisenhower proclaimed those holdings part of the new Tombigbee National Forest. The Witch Dance Horse Trail, kept by the Forest Service, runs about 15 miles through the forest between the parkway's Witch Dance trailhead and the Payamatha trailhead to the north.
Getting there
33.9116, -88.9390
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
