Sight · Natchez Trace Parkway
Wooded brick ruins of Mississippi's first chartered women's college
Overview
This quiet clearing holds the brick remains of Elizabeth Female Academy, which operated from 1818 to 1845 at the southern end of the Old Trace. It was the first female institution of higher learning chartered by Mississippi and one of the first female colleges in the country, founded on land donated by Elizabeth Roach Greenfield, whose name it carries. Students here studied subjects rarely offered to women at the time, including natural philosophy, chemistry, Latin, botany, and classical studies. John James Audubon taught drawing at the academy briefly in 1822, a small footnote to a much larger story about early women's education in the Deep South.
Parkwolf’s verdictWhy stop hereMap
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Natchez Trace Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Natchez Trace Parkway. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
Recorded for this place
Elizabeth Female Academy“You're approaching Elizabeth Female Academy, where a single brick wall survives from one of the country's earliest women's colleges.”
Plays as you drive up to Elizabeth Female Academy in the Parkwolf Natchez Trace Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
Expect ruins, not a standing or reconstructed building. What survives are roofless red-brick walls in a grassy clearing ringed by mature trees, with several door and window openings still clearly readable and broken, weathered wall ends where the rest of the structure is gone. An information sign at the site fills in the history, and there are memorial markers near the walls. Walking the perimeter and reading the openings as former rooms and entries is the heart of the visit.
The stop sits at milepost 5.1, an easy detour if you are starting or finishing the parkway near Natchez. The small lot has one accessible parking space and approximately ten other spaces, and a paved, level path about 450 feet long leads from the parking area to the viewing area.
Plan on daylight hours, since this is an open-air site. Morning or late afternoon light tends to work best, when low sun rakes across the brickwork and brings out the texture of the old walls. Wider framing from the edge of the clearing captures the full wall line against the trees.
This is a short, modest stop, not a museum or a rebuilt campus, and travelers expecting an intact historic building will be disappointed. The appeal lies in the history and the atmosphere of the clearing, so it rewards visitors who take a minute to read the sign rather than those after a quick photo and nothing more.
Wildlife
39 sightingsAmerican AlligatorMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
35 sightingsWhite-tailed DeerMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
53 sightingsWild TurkeyMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
28 sightingsGreat Blue HeronMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
29 sightingsRed-headed WoodpeckerMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
32 sightingsTurkey VultureMost seen around noonSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Natchez Trace. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Parkwolf’s Natchez Trace ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
