NATCHEZ — Adams County’s Native American heritage and history are part of a statewide project aimed to preserve Mississippi’s rare Native American mounds.

The recently opened Mississippi Mound Trail gives Adams County residents a unique opportunity to enjoy the history around them, Grand Village of the Natchez Indians Director Lance Harris said.

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History celebrated the opening of the Mississippi Mound Trail at Winterville Mounds on Monday.

The 350-mile trail, which reaches from DeSoto County in the northern most part of the state to Wilkinson County just south of Natchez along U.S. 61, is a driving tour of 33 sites where Native Americans erected earthen mounds.

Four sites — Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, Pocahontas Rest Area and Welcome Center, Winterville Mounds and Emerald Mound on the Natchez Trace Parkway — are state or federally operated and open to the public.

Visitors are welcome to walk among the mounds and enjoy interpretive signs and exhibits free of charge.

The trail is a collaboration between MDAH, the Mississippi Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration as well as various Native American groups throughout the state.

Adams County is especially important to the mound trail because two of its mounds are accessible to the public free of charge, Harris said.

“Interestingly, of the 33 sites, only four are open to the public and half of those public sites are here in Adams County,” Harris said.

The trail’s designation is in support of heritage tourism, Harris said, which allows the archaeologically significant mounds to achieve greater visibility among visitors to the state.

“Native Americans were building mounds before the pyramids were built in Egypt, to put it in a time perspective,” Harris said. “(But) the majority of the mounds on the (Mississippi Mound Trail) were built in what is call the Mississippian period, which is around 1000 A.D.”

Emerald Mound now is marked by a sign on the side of U.S. 61, Harris said, but does not have an interpretive center or museum on the property.

The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians does have such a site, Harris said, which is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays and 1:30 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The village will be closed Monday for Memorial Day.

For more information on the trails, visit: http://trails.mdah.ms.gov/mmt/index.html