Natchez National Park invites public to share input on future development of Forks of the Road site

Published 12:39 pm Monday, October 21, 2024

NATCHEZ – On Nov. 19, Natchez National Historical Park will begin a civic engagement process on the future of the Forks of the Road site at D’Evereux Drive and Liberty Road.

The site is the location of the second largest domestic slave market in the Deep South during the antebellum period, where tens of thousands of enslaved men, women, and children were trafficked. At the height of the pre-Civil War explosion in cotton production, these individuals were torn from their homes and families in states as far away as Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky and transported by ships or marched a thousand miles overland to the Forks of the Road. From there, they were sold by traders to labor in rural and urban areas in Natchez and the surrounding counties. In 1863, the Forks of the Road became one of the area’s first recruitment locations for formerly enslaved people to join the U.S. Colored Troops.

This initial civic engagement effort will help the National Park Service prepare preliminary concept plans and includes opportunities to participate in public listening sessions and provide comment. Preliminary concept plans developed as a result of the feedback from these sessions will be shared with the public in 2025. The Forks of the Road site is a new addition to the national historical park, and this planning process will address development for visitor access, preservation of resources, accessible visitor infrastructure, and visitor capacity. The goal of this plan is to create a place where the fundamental resources and values of the park are protected and where visitors can have meaningful experiences.

“We are pleased to offer this opportunity for the public to provide early input on future development and management at the Forks of the Road,” said Superintendent Kathleen Bond. “Since 2017, the National Park Service (NPS) has been working to acquire enough of the site to provide visitor access and has coordinated with park partners to identify opportunities for quality visitor experiences and thoughtful interpretation of the history and ongoing legacy of the site. We now wish to gather feedback from the public and stakeholders that will help us put formal planning for the site’s future on the right track.”

Public listening sessions will be held in Natchez to discuss the purpose of the concept plan project and garner feedback from the public on future ideas for the site on Nov. 19 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Historic Natchez Foundation and Nov. 20 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture. During the meetings, the planning team will explain the plan process, collect public ideas for the future of the site, showcase methods for further public comment, and answer participants’ questions. A similar virtual meeting will be held on Nov. 26 from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. CT.

More information about the meeting locations, meeting formats, and a link to join the virtual meeting can be found on the project website at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/FOTR_Concept_Plan.

Beginning on Oct. 21, written comments may be submitted by visiting https://parkplanning.nps.gov/FOTR_Concept_Plan and selecting “Open for Comment” on the left menu bar and selecting “Preliminary Civic Engagement Information.”

Written comments may also be submitted by mail to:

National Park Service

Denver Service Center

Attn: Forks of the Road Master Plan / Charles Lawson

1 Denver Federal Center, Building 50

Denver, CO 80225

To ensure the planning team has the opportunity to consider your ideas during the initial phase of the planning effort, comments must be submitted online or postmarked by November 30. Additional opportunities for commenting and public engagement will be offered throughout the life of the planning effort.

The 2017 boundary expansion of NATC authorized the incorporation of the Forks of the Road site into the park, and the first parcels of the Forks of the Road site came under NPS ownership in the spring of 2021. The site is comprised of urban parcels that have been developed and redeveloped over decades, though certain portions remain largely undeveloped. Particularly, some city-owned parcels contain a remnant historic road that dates to the slave market period (1833 to 1863) and a brick bridge that narrowly post-dates this period (circa 1888). Over this road trace, many enslaved persons walked their final steps on their thousand-mile journey in coffles down the length of the Natchez Trace. Few other resources are intact from the period of significance, a situation common of sites related to the slavery story in America. This erasure of history from the landscape underscores the need for thoughtful planning to provide for a powerful visitor experience at the site.

Consultation and coordination among the public, partner organizations, and other stakeholders is vitally important to this planning process, and successful implementation of the park’s future plans will depend on continued coordinated efforts with partners.