Bullen Creek gives its name to a nature trail at milepost 18.4 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, an 1,100-foot walk whose interpretive stops describe a mature hardwood forest. An older park brochure called it a mixed hardwood and pine forest and allowed fifteen minutes. It lies in the parkway's southernmost ecological section, the Coastal Plains-Loess, which takes in the first 109 miles north of Natchez. The vegetation mapping of the parkway, published in 2016, found ravine forests in that section distinctive for southern magnolia and spruce pine, two trees not known on the parkway further north, and found water tupelo and laurel oak nowhere on the parkway north of it.
The mapping traced beech forest with southern magnolia from the southern terminus to about milepost 87, a limit set by the northern edge of the magnolia, and found it covering only 63.3 hectares, 0.3 percent of the parkway.
The creek itself runs about five miles in the federal hydrography, and the parkway crosses it less than half a mile north of the trailhead.
Getting there
31.7235, -91.1757
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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