Tag: Natchez

Natchez is the county seat of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. With a total population of 18,464 (according to the 2000 census), it is the largest community and the only incorporated municipality within Adams County. Located on the Mississippi River, some 90 miles southwest of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and 85 miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it is the eighteenth-largest city in the state. It is named for the Natchez tribe of Native Americans who lived in the vicinity through the arrival of Europeans in the eighteenth century.
Established by French colonists in 1716, Natchez is one of the oldest and most important European settlements in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and served as the capital of the Mississippi Territory and then the state of Mississippi. It predates Jackson, which replaced Natchez as the capital in 1822, by more than a century. The strategic location of Natchez, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, ensured that it would become…