Silver Street and Natchez Under-the-Hill

The Spanish built Silver Street about 1790 to connect Natchez to the riverfront below. In the 1800s, Natchez Under-the-Hill was a major port on the Mississippi River, exporting and importing agricultural goods, especially cotton, and as the city grew richer its imports became more luxurious. A newspaper article about the devastating 1840 tornado at Natchez estimated that 100 flatboatmen had perished and emphasized the immense losses of pork, bacon, lard, and vegetables at the landing. Shipments through Natchez also included large numbers of enslaved people, as the expanding cotton economy and increased steamboat traffic on the Mississippi raised the number of enslaved people sent there, though the river also offered a route to freedom for escaping slaves who hid on steamboats or used counterfeit freedom papers. Under-the-Hill's streets were lined with saloons, hotels, warehouses, grocery stores, a coal yard, an ice house, a quarter-mile race track, a ten-pin alley, and a few private residences, many serving the flatboats, keelboats, and steamboats docking at Natchez. The city had a dual personality, contrasted as “Natchez proper” on top of the hill and “Natchez improper” below, where gambling dens, saloons, and houses of prostitution drew rough boatmen and travelers. In 1816, traveler William Richardson called Under-the-Hill the most licentious spot he had ever seen, and in 1833 Captain J. E. Alexander wrote that the lower town had a worse character than any place on the river, with grog shops, desperate characters, and dreadful riots.

Vidalia, Louisiana · United States