Growing traffic on the Natchez Trace gave Ferguson the opportunity to develop Mount Locust as an inn. After 1795, the Mississippi was legally opened for American traffic, and settlers floated their products downriver to sell at Natchez or New Orleans, then often walked back over the Natchez Trace because their boats could not go upstream. Laid out by Ferguson in 1799, Union Town included an inn, a tannery, and a few houses, and an 1812 almanac listed Mount Locust there among the taverns on the Trace. As business boomed, Ferguson built the guest house called Sleepy Hollow, where travelers slept before going to the main house for meals, while the kitchen stood in a separate building. Mount Locust also grew with the family and the region into the Big House of a fair-size plantation. A partial inventory from 1801 suggests that most furnishings were made from local materials, while tableware and the looking glass probably came from Philadelphia. Oak and sassafras were used for framing, clapboard and furniture came from heart poplar, and later alterations can be dated by the kinds of nails, screws, and sawed lumber used in successive periods of construction.
