Day trips from Nashville · Park
Natchez Trace Parkway
27 miles from downtown Nashville · about 40 minutes to the northern terminus
National Park Service, northern terminus southwest of Nashville
The Natchez Trace Parkway is a 444-mile National Park Service road that begins southwest of Nashville and runs to Natchez, Mississippi, with no commercial traffic and no billboards. The first hundred miles south of Nashville are the best scenic drive in Middle Tennessee.
- Total length
- 444 miles
- Fee
- Free, no reservations
- Waterfalls
- Jackson Falls at milepost 404.7, Fall Hollow at 391.9
Permits, fees and access
Free and open year round. Plan around one thing in 2026: the Double Arch Bridge near Franklin, the most photographed structure on the whole Parkway, closed in April 2026 for construction and is expected to remain closed into spring 2027. The Parkway is closed between milepost 440 and the Highway 96 ramp at milepost 437, with a detour of about seven and a half miles. Everything south of that is open.
One thing to know first
There are no gas stations, no restaurants and no services on the Parkway itself. Fill the tank and pack food before you get on it, because the exits are far apart and often lead nowhere useful.
Access rules, fees and closures verified August 15, 2026 against the agency that manages this place. They change, sometimes without notice. Check before you drive.
The neighborhoods closest to it
If this is the kind of Saturday you want a short drive from your front door, these are the parts of Middle Tennessee that put you nearest to it.
I keep this list because it is genuinely how people spend weekends here, and because almost every guide to it is out of date. If you are weighing a move to Middle Tennessee and want to know which part of it puts you closest to the things you actually like, ask me. No pitch.