Louisiana Purchase Exploration Trails

South to Woodville

West to Jonesville

Welcome to Natchez, origin of the Dunbar-Hunter and Freeman-Custis expeditions. Natchez was the southernmost important US port on the Mississippi prior to the Louisiana Purchase.

William Dunbar, a planter, scientist, and surveyor, lived just south of this bustling river port. Dunbar was known by reputation by Thomas Jefferson for his enthusiasm for science, which Jefferson shared. Jefferson would enlist Dunbar’s assistance in planning two expeditions through the Louisiana Territory.

Today, Natchez is known for Natchez National Historic Park and as the southern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway National Historic Trail. Fort Rosalie, today part of the National Historic Park, was known in Dunbar’s day as Fort Panmure, its name under English control.

Fort Panmure was occupied by the British when Dunbar arrived in Baton Rouge from Philadelphia in 1773, and would remain so until 1779, when Bernardo de Galvez won the fort for Spain with the surrender of Fort New Richmond in Baton Rouge. The Spanish never occupied the fort, and it would be given to the United States along with the surrounding area east of the Mississippi and north of Spanish West Florida in the Treaty of Paris (1783).

In 1790, William Dunbar moved from Baton Rouge to a spot nine miles south of Natchez, where he established a plantation known as “The Forest.” The plantation home, constructed in 1792, was destroyed by fire in 1856.