Regions

Deep South road trips

The Delta, the Black Belt, and the Georgia heartland: blues, civil rights, Faulkner, kudzu, tamales and the deepest history per mile in America. The spiritual center of the whole trip.

The Deep South has 21 back-roads routes, about 4,674 miles and 178 curated stops, and 17 ready-made itineraries use them.

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Routes in the Deep South

• The Blues Highway
  US 61 through the Mississippi Delta
  Memphis → Natchez · ~320 mi · 2–4 days · skips I-55
• Natchez Trace Parkway
  444 miles, zero billboards, ten thousand years
  Natchez → Nashville · ~444 mi · 3–4 days · skips I-55 / I-65 corridor
• Grant's Vicksburg Campaign
  The 1863 maneuver, county road by county road
  Loop from Vicksburg · ~165 mi · 1–2 days · skips I-20
• The Civil Rights Trail
  Jackson to Birmingham through the Black Belt
  Jackson → Birmingham · ~430 mi · 3–4 days · skips I-20 / I-85 / I-65
• The Hill Country Ramble
  Old 78 and MS 7 through Faulkner country
  Memphis → Tupelo · ~130 mi · 1–2 days · skips I-22
• Hank's Lost Highway
  US 31 from Montgomery to the Bay
  Montgomery → Mobile · ~170 mi · 1 day · skips I-65
• Sherman to the Swamp
  US 441 down the spine of Georgia
  Dillard → Folkston · ~330 mi · 3–4 days · skips I-75 / I-16 / I-95
• US 11: The Valley South
  Appalachia's exit ramp
  Chattanooga → Meridian · ~330 mi · 3–4 days · skips I-59
• The Shoals
  the river that sings
  Corinth → Huntsville · ~150 mi · 2 days · skips I-22 / I-65
• The Black Belt & Gee's Bend
  quilts, prairie and holy ground
  Tuscaloosa → Selma · ~165 mi · 2 days · skips I-65 (by 70 miles)
• The Old Federal Road
  the road that made Alabama
  Columbus, GA → Fort Mims · ~230 mi · 2–3 days · skips I-85 / I-65
• US 84: Wiregrass to Mockingbird
  peanuts, weevils and Miss Nelle
  Dothan → Monroeville · ~170 mi · 2 days · skips I-10 (by 60 miles)
• The Free State of Jones
  Mississippi's inside-out county
  Meridian → Natchez · ~200 mi · 2 days · skips I-59 / US 84 four-lane hurry
• US 49: Jackson to the Sound
  the Hattiesburg line
  Jackson → Gulfport · ~160 mi · 1–2 days · skips I-55 / I-10
• Sherman's March to the Sea
  the left wing, Milledgeville to Savannah
  Milledgeville → Savannah · ~185 mi · 2 days · skips I-16
• US 41: Dixie Highway & the Atlanta Campaign
  the General's road
  Chattanooga → Atlanta · ~120 mi · 1–2 days · skips I-75
• The Chattahoochee Trace
  the river border nobody drives
  Columbus → Bainbridge · ~180 mi · 2 days · skips I-75 (by 90 miles)
• Plains & Andersonville
  peanuts and the prison pen
  Macon → Plains · ~90 mi · 1 day · skips I-75
• US 341: The Golden Isles Highway
  peaches to the beaches
  Barnesville → Brunswick · ~225 mi · 2 days · skips I-75 / I-16
• North Georgia Gold & Apples
  Dahlonega to the roof of Georgia
  Dahlonega → Brasstown Bald · ~130 mi · 1–2 days · skips GA 400 / I-575
• The Trail of Tears: Georgia to Kentucky
  the northern road of the removal
  New Echota → Hopkinsville · ~350 mi · 3 days · skips I-75 / I-24

Ready-made itineraries in the Deep South

• Delta 101
  3 days · ~420 mi · from Memphis
  The essential first taste: down the Blues Highway to the Crossroads and the Delta's shrines, back through Faulkner's Oxford. Music every night if…
• Grant's Campaign Weekend
  2 days · ~180 mi · from Vicksburg
  The 1863 campaign in two days, exactly as the user manual (Grant's memoirs) describes it — five battles, one siege, county roads the whole way.
• The Red Dirt Roadhouse Run
  6 days · ~900 mi · from Nashville
  Six nights, zero pretense: the South's living roadhouse circuit — honky-tonks, jukes and sand-floor bars, run north to gulf. (Red Dirt's mother…
• The Trace & the Delta Loop
  7 days · ~1000 mi · from Nashville
  The atlas's flagship week: the full 444-mile Parkway south, then the Blues Highway north — two centuries of American sound and trouble in one ellipse.
• The Civil Rights Pilgrimage
  7 days · ~900 mi · from Memphis
  Memphis to Birmingham through the movement's ground truth. The most important week in this atlas — built with rest stops, because it asks a lot.
• The Deep South Grand Circle
  14 days · ~1700 mi · from Memphis
  The whole lower South in one loop: Delta blues, Grant's campaign, River Road reckonings, Cajun Saturdays, the Gulf at porch speed, Hank's highway…
• The Hot Tamale Trail
  2 days · ~160 mi · from Greenville, MS
  The Delta's strangest, greatest food story: hot tamales — wet, spicy, paper-wrapped, by the dozen — rooted in migrant field labor a century ago and…
• The Whole Hog
  28 days · ~4300 mi · from Memphis (loop)
  The full perimeter: Delta → River Road → Cajun country → the whole Gulf → up the Atlantic from St. Augustine's kitsch to Blackbeard's inlet → the…
• Sherman's March to the Sea
  2 days · ~210 mi · from Milledgeville, GA
  Georgia's antebellum capital to the sea by the route the Union army burned across in 1864 — old statehouses, market squares, a prison camp and the…
• The Sacred South: Gospel & Sanctuary
  6 days · ~700 mi · from Tuscaloosa
  Alabama's Black Belt as holy ground: the quilting congregation of Gee's Bend, the churches that anchored the movement, and the old Federal Road's…
• Memphis to New Orleans on US 61
  4 days · ~500 mi · from Memphis
  The full Highway 61 run, river to river: the Delta's jukes and shrines, Vicksburg's bluffs, Natchez's mansions and the Felicianas, then the levee…
• Atlanta to Savannah to Charleston
  4 days · ~420 mi · from Atlanta
  Georgia's antebellum capital to the sea on the route Sherman burned, then up the coast road from Savannah to Charleston through the Lowcountry's…
• The Great River Road, Southern Act
  6 days · ~650 mi · from Memphis
  The Mississippi's last 700 miles by its levee roads: Delta blues country on MS 1, Vicksburg and Natchez on the bluffs, the Felicianas, the…

Also touches the Deep South: The Natchez Trace, End to End · The Eastern Crescent · The Long Way to the Opry · Nashville to Atlanta on the Dixie Highway

States: Georgia · Alabama · Mississippi · Tennessee · Kentucky. Browse the other regions: Gulf Coast · Upper South · Atlantic Coast · Florida Peninsula · Ozarks, Ouachitas & the Bootheel · Beyond the Sabine.