Longleaf Trace

The corridor the trail follows began as a railroad line built to move the region's most valuable crop, its timber. In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, south Mississippi's vast longleaf pine forests fed a booming lumber industry, and rail lines like this one hauled logs to the mills and finished lumber out to market. The Mississippi Central Railroad ran passengers and freight along this route, linking Hattiesburg with the small towns that grew up along the tracks.

As the great forests were cut and the lumber era faded, the railroad's business dwindled, and in time the trains stopped and the rails were taken up. Rather than let the corridor be lost, local leaders and the Pearl and Leaf Rivers Rails-to-Trails Recreational District turned the old railbed into a public greenway that opened in the 2000s. The result is a path that traces the exact route the trains once took, past former depots and through towns that owe their beginnings to the railroad.

This corner of Mississippi lies in the ancestral homeland of the Choctaw people, who lived across the piney woods and river bottoms of the south-central part of the state for countless generations. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians remains federally recognized today, centered near Philadelphia to the north, and Choctaw history runs deep through this whole region of forests and streams.

The towns strung along the trace, Hattiesburg, Sumrall, Bassfield, and Prentiss among them, grew up as railroad and timber communities. Their old commercial districts, depots, and country stores still stand near the path in places, and stopping in them is part of the pleasure of a long ride. The trail passes farmland and forest, crossing quiet county roads and shaded creeks along the way.

The longleaf pine that gives the trail its name is a remarkable tree, adapted to fire and slow to grow, that once covered a huge sweep of the coastal plain from Virginia to Texas. Young longleafs spend years as a tuft of long green needles close to the ground, resembling a clump of grass, before shooting upward into a tall, straight trunk. The open, sunlit forests they form were among the great ecosystems of the American South.

Along the trace you pass through a working southern woodland of pine and hardwood, with dogwood, oak, and sweetgum mixing in. In spring the understory blooms and the air fills with birdsong; in the warmer months the shade of the canopy is a genuine relief from the sun. The corridor itself acts as a long, narrow greenway that shelters wildlife and native plants through the surrounding farmland and timber country.

The trail is a fine place for watching wildlife precisely because it moves slowly and quietly through the woods. Songbirds are everywhere in the trees, red-shouldered hawks and turkey vultures ride the air overhead, and white-tailed deer, rabbits, squirrels, and the occasional armadillo turn up along the edges. Turtles sun on logs in the creeks the trail crosses, and in spring and summer the woods hum with insects and frogs.

Spring and fall are the loveliest seasons here, with mild air, wildflowers or turning leaves, and comfortable temperatures for a long ride. Summer is hot and humid, best enjoyed early in the morning or in the cool of evening under the pine shade. Winter is quiet and mild by northern standards, with bare hardwoods opening up longer views through the woods and easy, uncrowded miles for those who bundle up.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.