Ridgeland: Ridge Town on the Trace
Near Jackson, Mississippi
Just north of Jackson, the town of Ridgeland grew up where the Natchez Trace passed through a long, wooded ridge. A community called Yellowley's Crossing was founded here in eighteen fifty-three. A Trace-side inn called Brashear's Stand opened in eighteen oh five, feeding and sheltering boatmen walking home to Tennessee and Kentucky after selling their goods in Natchez.
The Illinois Central Railroad arrived after the Civil War, and a pair of developers bought the ridge land in eighteen ninety-six, renamed it Ridgeland, and platted a town. Ridgeland incorporated on December twenty-ninth, eighteen ninety-nine. Today it is a suburb of Jackson, but the original Natchez Trace corridor runs directly through it, and parkway mileposts here mark some of the same ground those early-nineteenth-century travelers crossed on foot.
