The Hermitage has made a lot of effort to market themselves as more than just a president's house and Halloween is one of the big holidays they add a lot of events for. In addition to haunted house tours, they have a one man show of Sleepy Hollow that has two performances in the log cabin by the creek. It's an excellent production and has a lot of time to talk to the actor about his knowledge about Washington Irving.
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We did get a 4 mile hike in on the Natchez Trace while in Mississippi. The Trace isn't too hard of a hike since it doesn't have a lot of height changes. The visitor center in Tupelo is well worth seeing as it has a nice video explaining the Trace and is also where you get your passport stamps for all the places in Tupelo. We hiked to the Chickasaw village, which you can also drive to. It has outlines of the former buildings on the site and explanations about the people who used to live here.
An hour west of Tupelo is Oxford, Mississippi. The home of the University of Mississippi, this town also is where William Faulkner lived most of his life. He bought a former plantation house called Rowan Oak, where he lived until his death. His wife eventually turned the house over to the university, which means that it is remarkably well intact for a house of a famous person. The tours are self guided, which is nice, and the grounds are very pretty. It was a very popular spot to visit on the Sunday we went.
The battles of Tupelo and Brice's Crossroads oddly don't have their own battlefield centers run by the National Parks. Instead the Mississippi Last Stand is officially the home base for both battles (and where you get the National Battlefield stamps). The day we went in the center was doing deep cleaning and they didn't charge us an entry fee. They have a nice little museum and their interpretation of the battle is surprisingly even-handed. Don't expect a big battlefield tour, but it is worth it just to learn the history of the area.
I've often heard this place is a tourist trap, but having experienced it, it's a fun one. While Presley's tiny home isn't much to look at (especially because it's one of many since the family moved around), but the complex is very nice. There's a whole production of a church service that Presley would have been involved in, a statue on the hill, a small museum, and the grounds are carefully tended. It was a fun dive into Elvis-dom and Tupelo has really linked itself to Elvis's early years.
The Sam Davis home in Smyrna has a strange history as a long standing museum created and maintained by the losers of the Civil War. Sam Davis was one of many men executed for various reasons during the war, but who had a story that lined up with the "lost cause" ideology the South crafted after defeat. With that in mind, Sam Davis is a hero with an awkward place in history, but the Sam Davis home has been a major establishment in the area. Oddly it seems to have survived the current climate in history better than Traveler's Rest by making partnerships with schools in the area. All very strange for a Confederate war hero.
That all being said, the Sam Davis home has used October to provide haunted tours for a long time. Recently they have started a History After Dark series that is for a smaller group and deals with more adult subject matter. The tour focuses on the macabre two month laying out of Davis's body and the incidents around his (third) burial. The tour of the house is by candlelight and gives a feel of what houses would have looked like at night at that time period. |
AuthorA librarian doing the travel. Archives
May 2024
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