In 1932, during the Depression, a group of Natchez women had an idea: open the mansions to paying visitors. There was no other money coming in. The first Pilgrimage was an economic survival strategy that became the model for every historic home tour in the American South. Nearly a century later, two garden clubs — the Pilgrimage Garden Club and the Natchez Garden Club — run competing spring and fall pilgrimages, each opening a different set of private homes. Some of these houses are never otherwise accessible to the public. The Pilgrimage created Natchez's tourism economy and preserved the mansions that would otherwise have been demolished. It also, for decades, told only the planter's version of Natchez history. That narrative is slowly changing.
