From Prehistoric Animals to Elvis: Explore 10,000 Years of History on This U.S. Road Trip

As the famous sign says: Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is “The Hit Recording Capital of the World,” thanks in part to the Muscle Shoals Studio. Jimmy Cliff, Joe Cocker, Aretha Franklin, Levon Helm, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, and the Staples Singers all recorded there. Stop by the only musician-owned music studio for inspiration for your road trip playlist. In addition to listening to original recordings, the studio tour also includes a look into the bathroom where Mick Jagger wrote Brown Sugar.

Pull off the parkway to tour the childhood home of Helen Keller. Ivy Green is the name of the simple white clapboard house built back in 1820. Visitors can see the famous well-pump where teacher Annie Sullivan taught Keller her very first hand sign (water). From there, Keller wrote 11 books, lectured in 39 counties, and spent a lifetime dedicated to improving the conditions of people who are blind-deaf worldwide.

About 10 miles past the Tennessee-Alabama border is a stone wall 30 years in the making. Tom Hendrix began building the wall to commemorate his great-great-grandmother Te-lah-nay’s long, on-foot journey from Oklahoma to Tennessee more than 150 years ago.

Following the Indian Removal Act of 1830–and the subsequent Trail of Tears, in which the American government forced approximately 60,000 Indigenous peoples off their ancestral lands between 1830 and 1850–government officials forcibly removed Te-lah-nay and her tribe, the Yuchi, from their home on the Tennessee River to Oklahoma. After one winter in Oklahoma, distraught to be separated from her beloved river, Te-lah-nay walked back to her native Alabama—a solo pursuit that took the teenage girl five full years. Each stone in Hendrix’s memorial wall represents a step in her long walk home.

About ten miles from the parkway’s end (or beginning) sits a sacred hilltop known as the Emerald Mound. Ancestors of the Natchez peoples built this holy site between 1250 and 1600 A.D. At the time, it acted as the ceremonial center for local populations who lived in outlying villages. Today, it is the second-largest ceremonial mound in the United States.

Two hundred years ago, Natchez was a major port where enslaved people were trafficked before the Civil War and cotton was shipped on paddle boats to the textile factories in the north. At the time, the river’s edge was lined with brothels, taverns, and gambling halls, which helped the town garner a reputation as one of the rowdiest ports along the Mississippi River. Today, a row of shops and restaurants has taken their place along Silver Street in the area known as Natchez Under the Hill. The Forks of the Road Slave Market in Natchez was transferred to the National Park Service in an effort “acknowledging the travesties of enslavement and preserving the site’s stories for the education of this and future generations,” said Kathleen Bond, the historical park’s superintendent. Natchez National Historical Park was established in 1988 as the first national park with a mandate to tell the stories of “[B]lacks, both slave and free.”