Natchez, MS: Tuesday 4/21/15

Today was a day of choices. Morning and afternoon rides were offered as was a morning hop on, hop off bus tour of Natchez. We decided to take the morning bus tour. Natchez was a huge river trading stop, the western most point in MS. Many of the richest plantation owners built "town homes" here, and each tried to outdo the others in oppulence. General  Grant deemed the city "too beautiful to burn' during the civil war so many of the ante-bellum homes are intact and now restored to their glory. We saw three homes before lunch: Magnolia, Stanton, and Rosalie. We also had to make a stop at the Basilic of St. Marry in Natchez, the first cathedral in Mississippi. We heded back to the boat after Stanton Hall, a little too late to load our bikes on the truck for the afternoon ride, so we hurridly boarded the bus to lunch at the beautiful Cedar Grove Plantation. It was sunny and warm and good southern food; a perfect day for a picnic on a plantation! We didn't get to see inside because it is a working Bed and Breakfast Inn, but the grounds were georgeous.

Then, it was back on the bus for our last stop at Longwood, one of the most interesting places we've ever seen. It, too, was a town home built by a wealthy plantation owner, but when the war broke out, he lost his land and then died shortly after.  The house was never completed. The workers, mostly from the north (Pennnsylvania), left the worksite at the outset of the war and never returned. They left many of the tools they used in the unfinished portion of the house. The succeeding genertions never had enough money to complete it, so they lived in the finished "basement" until the house finally made it into the hands of one of the garden clubs that administer it now. It's architecture is unique as well, with an eastern onion skin type dome and octgonal design. You can look up from the first floor into the dome and still see all the scaffolding used to build it. Fortunately, the outside brick (it would have been stuccoed later) and roof were completed! Amazing place.

The Basilica of St. Mary

Longword's unfinished upper stories

Longwood