Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 914 | Page 39

The relaxed downtown square at Natchez, Mississippi.
staying in a single room. Mile marker 122
will be your opportunity to walk with the alligators and snakes, if you so desire. Cypress
Swamp has wooden walkways throughout
the water tupelo and bald cypress swamp
where you can explore and see the area from
on top, rather than from the road.
Around mile marker 260 you can still see
Elvis. This is Tupelo, Mississippi, where Elvis
Presley was born. The two-room shotgun
house where he grew up still stands and is
now part of the fifteen-acre Elvis Presley Park.
Inside this park is a museum which contains
many items surrounding the life of Elvis that
the die-hards just have to see, like a Las Vegas
jumpsuit he wore during one of his concerts.
And, as I am sure everyone realizes, this has
been the number one tourist attraction in
Tupelo since Elvis recorded his first hit record.
However, since December 2002 another attraction has opened which readers
of this magazine might find just as interesting. The Tupelo Automobile Museum which
houses the automobile collection of Frank
K. Spain. Frank was an early pioneer in radio
and telecommunications with an Electronics
Engineering degree he received from Mississippi State University at age nineteen. His
fascination with cars began in 1950 with the

purchase of a 1937 MG. It wasn’t until 1983
and the purchase of a 1938 Lagonda that he
finally began taking collecting seriously. The
museum is over 120,000 square feet and is
separated into an area for displaying vehicles
and an area where restorations are undertaken. There are presently 150 cars in the collection, including a 1948 Tucker, 1886 Benz,
1967 Roth Wishbone, 1929 Dusenberg Model J and a 1976 Elvis Lincoln Mark IV. I suppose
in Tupelo one must always have an Elvis car
in his collection, but even without it the Tupelo Automobile Museum is a must stop for
automobile enthusiasts.
As a reminder that this area was contested during the Civil War, north of Tupelo the
graves of thirteen unknown Confederate solders can be seen at mile marker 269.4. There
are other areas of interest for the Civil War
historian with five battlefields within an easy
drive from the parkway. Vicksburg National
Military Park, Tupelo National Battlefield and
Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site
are in Mississippi, while Shiloh National Military Park and Stones River National Battlefield
are in Tennessee. Milepost 327 is situated
on the Tennessee River in Alabama. George
Colbert operated a stand and ferry here and
reportedly charged Andrew Jackson $75,000

to ferry his army across the river.
The gravesite of Meriwether Lewis is at
milepost 385, and one of only two active Old
Trace-era structures can be seen at milepost
407. From 1801 until traffic on the trace declined, John and Dolly Gordon ran a ferry
across the Duck River. The house was built in
1818 and was part of a 1,500 acre plantation
managed by Dolly, as she outlived her husband by 40 years.
At milepost 438 stands the Natchez Trace
Parkway Arches. This is the f