Trail&Rails, an innovative partnership between the National Park Service and Amtrak, places National Park Service volunteer guides on some of our nation’s iconic train routes. Guides you’ll find onboard Amtrak’s Crescent route, from Atlanta to Birmingham (and sometimes New Orleans) represent Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. 

We’re here to tell stories, to help interpret the rich history and environment of our region, and to help make your Amtrak journey enjoyable and informative.  Our guides usually hang out in the Café car, but you may also find us walking through the train or even on the platforms. Come see us.  Or just stop us and let us know how we can help.  If you tell us where you’re headed we’ll even try to give you tips about your destination.

We’re not always on the train so you can also find useful information through the links below.

Our route through the heart of the south travels the cradle of America’s civil rights story.  It is a rich cultural corridor.  And the Crescent route through the south covers perhaps the most diverse natural environment in our nation. 

Here you'll find a short video featuring some of our  interpreters talking about our CrescentTour route:

•  The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta celebrates the life and legacy of the iconic leader of America’s Civil Rights movement.  Visitors experience the home and neighborhood where  Dr. King was born and lived as a child,  his spiritual home, the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the site where both he and his wife Coretta are entombed.
  https://www.nps.gov/malu/index.htm

•  Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston remembers a key component of the movement, the student-led Freedom  Riders movement, starting with the bombing just outside Anniston of the first Freedom Riders bus on Mothers’ Day, 1961.
  https://www.nps.gov/frri/index.htm

•  Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument honors the 1963 turning point of the Civil Rights movement, starting with the  fire hose and dog attacks on Birmingham children in the spring, and then the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in September.
  https://www.nps.gov/bicr/index.htm

•  Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail is south of the modern Crescent route. It honors the 1965 struggle for Voting Rights focused in Selma, Alabama, including the “Bloody Sunday” march over Edmond Pettus Bridge led by John Lewis. https://www.nps.gov/semo/index.htm

•  Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, about an hour’s drive south of Anniston, was the site of the bloody 1814 battle which ended Native American claims to their ancestral homelands in what we now call Alabama. It opened Alabama to white  domination and the expansion of plantation and slavery systems. 
  https://www.nps.gov/hobe/index.htm

• Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama, preserves the site where the Army Air Corps trained African American pilots to fly combat missions during World War II  in their distinctive "Red Tails" aircraft.
  https://www.nps.gov/tuai/index.htm

• Tuskegee Insititute National Historic Site  encompasses the campus of Tuskegee University, a private, historically Black land-grant college founded in 1880.  Tuskegee;s first president, Booker T. Washington, builit the school's reputation, and became an advisor to several U.S. presidents, and a leading spokesperson of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Among those he recruited to the campus was scientist George Washington Carver.
  https://www.nps.gov/tuin/index.htm

• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, in the heart of the French Quarter and Treme neighborhoods, celebrates the cultural history which shaped the origins and evolution of the jazz tradition in New Orleans.  Offerings include exhibits, interpretive neighborhood walks, and concerts in iconic locations.
  https://www.nps.gov/jazz/index.htm

• The six sites of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve are scattered across south Louisiana, exploring the rich cultural mix and history of this iconic region.  The three outlying Arcadian cultural sites show how Canada’s displaced Arcadians became Louisiana’s Cajuns.  Seventeen miles south of New Orleans the Barataria Preserve provides the opportunity to explore this region’s wild wetlands, alligators, and birds up close.  Chalmette Battlefield, just downriver from the city, was the site of the 1815 “Battle of New Orleans.”  And in the heart of the French Quarter itself, the park’s Visitor Center explores how three centuries of cultural exchange have created one of America’s most distinctive cities.
  https://www.nps.gov/jela/index.htm

Here are links to download some of the interpretive brochures we’ve developed for your Crescent tour through the south:

•  Out-the-Window is a quick guide to interesting spots along our route, all the way from Atlanta to New Orleans.

•  The Crescent Civil Rights Tour highlights the significance of the Crescent route as the cradle of America’s civil rights revolution.

•  The Crescent Natural History Tour summarizes the geological foundations of our region, the impact that topography has had on development, the vibrant diversity of our ecology, and the threats to our endangered Gulf coast.

•  The Crescent Music Tour explores the rich cultural heritage of our region, through the diverse musical traditions that have emerged along the Crescent route.

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