For the first time in nearly 40 years, there are holes in that fence in Overton Park’s Old Forest, and the public is welcome to walk through it and to a new half-mile walking trail beyond it.
Leaders and park friends gathered Thursday, November 13th, to cut a ceremonial, “golden” portion of the fence to officially open the trail and that part of the park. The event marked the first time the public was welcome there since the 1980s.
With the fence cut, those gathered streamed through the hole in the fence and in the Old Forest. The brand-new trail still showed fresh signs of construction, like tire marks left from machines. The half-mile loop meanders up and down gentle slopes and close enough to the zoo to see one walk of the Teton Trek exhibit.
Thursday’s event was preceded by a tumultuous, years-long fight over the Memphis Zoo using the Overton Park Greensward as overflow parking. That fight and the ensuing agreement between the park, the zoo, and the city were cascading developments all moving to Thursday’s moment. Once disagreeable park neighbors cut that golden fence together.
“This is progress,” said Memphis Mayor Paul Young. “This is collaboration.”
Getting to that moment was also super-charged with a with a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development secured by U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN09).
“The parking controversy pained me because two of my favorite institutions were at war, and some of my favorite people were at war,” Cohen said Thursday. “I wanted to be able to solve that.”
Memphis Zoo president and CEO Matt Thompson called it a “once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
“For 40 years, these 12 acres have been fenced, set aside with the hope that one day they would serve an important purpose,” Thompson said. “Today, that purpose becomes clear. It is now becoming part of the Overton Park Conservancy’s [OPC] expanding work in the forest conservation research and education. I would like to say as president and CEO of the zoo how proud we are to contribute to that purpose.”
Those acres of land was set to become a zoo exhibit that focused on the local forest ecosystem. The zoo called the exhibit the Chickasaw Bluffs Trail in a 2009 Facebook post. Many locals knew it as just the Chickasaw Trail.
Canceling the project and pulling down the fence was part of a list of demands from the Stop Hurting Overton Park group in a 2015 petition that focused on ending parking on the Overton Park Greensward.
“The zoo fenced off 17 acres of forested land, formerly accessible to park visitors, with a chain-link fence and barbed wire,” reads the petition. “It plans to develop an exhibit called Chickasaw Trail on this site. The fence is a visual blight, and the Chickasaw Trail will be worse.”
In 2022, zoo leaders returned the land to OPC. It was part of a final agreement to end Greensward parking forever that included other land swaps between the zoo and OPC.
Kaci Murley, OPC’s executive director, said the Old Forest is the only old-growth forest in the Southeast and only one of three in the country.
“We are thrilled to finally welcome the public into the last remaining section of the Old Forest that has been closed behind this fence for nearly 40 years,” Murley said. “For the first time in a generation, the Old Forest is whole again.”