Natchez Trace Parkway | BIRDSONG HOLLOW (MP 438)

Double Arch Bridge spanning Birdsong Hollow on the Natchez Trace Parkway

Double Arch Bridge spanning Birdsong Hollow on the Natchez Trace Parkway

The Birdsong Hollow stop on the Natchez Trace Parkway is the first official stop you come to when traveling south from the Parkway’s northern starting point (there are some no-name parking lots prior to it). As long as the National Park Service keeps the vegetation trimmed, you can get a decent view of a double-arch bridge that spans Birdsong Hollow. If you want a photo, be sure to visit in the evening when the sun is illuminating the bridge from the west. If you visit in the morning when the sun is shining from the east, you can get a better view from below by taking the Historic Franklin / Hwy 96 exit on the south end of the bridge. However, from this angle you will have telephone poles and wires in the way, so you just can’t win. Also, the bridge is too wide to photograph straight on, so any hope of capturing it all must be done at an angle, which is also the type of view you get at the Birdsong Hollow stop.

I have no idea what the official name of the bridge is, but I’ve seen it called the Birdsong Hollow Bridge, the Natchez Trace Parkway Arch Bridge, and the Double Arch Bridge. Completed in 1995, it stretches 1,572 feet across Birdsong Hollow Valley. It was the first concrete, double-arch, segmentally-constructed bridge in the United States, and it won the Presidential Award for Design Excellence that year. The same people who designed the Linn Cove Viaduct on the Blue Ridge Parkway designed this bridge on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

One half of the Double Arch Bridge over Birdsong Hollow on the Natchez Trace Parkway

One half of the Double Arch Bridge over Birdsong Hollow on the Natchez Trace Parkway

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Last updated on November 22, 2021
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