The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia

Displaying items by tag: baker creek preserve

Knoxville Urban Wilderness — Baker Creek Preserve mapTrails at Baker Creek Preserve.  Visit Knoxville

City cultivation of urban nature amenities proceeds apace

KNOXVILLE — The latest phase in a multimillion dollar plan to turn the southern end of the James White Parkway into an integral part of the city’s Urban Wilderness officially kicked off Monday afternoon (Dec. 19). 

Numerous officials, including Mayor Indya Kincannon, showed up for the groundbreaking of the Baker Creek Pavilion, a key component of the ambitious project.

The city is pouring $2.7 million into the Baker Creek area of the Urban Wilderness Gateway Park, which will offer public restrooms, a picnic area and plenty of parking.

Published in News

 DSC3094The Whip Contest, set for 3 p.m. Saturday at Drop Inn, is a perennial crowd favorite at the annual Appalachian Mountain Bike Club Fall Festival. Courtesy AMBC

With food trucks, demos and contests, this year’s family-friendly bike festival is ready to roll. And they haven’t forgotten about the Vols.

KNOXVILLE — There’s a different kind of homecoming set for this weekend. It doesn’t feature football, but it still involves wheel routes. It’s a celebration of the city’s unique outdoor recreational offerings in an urban center.

The Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, a 650-member posse devoted to the acquisition, maintenance and marketing of regional mountain bike trails for multiple uses, hosts its 13th FREE annual fall festival Nov. 4-6, centered around Baker Creek Preserve and the rest of the Urban Wilderness.

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Inside of Knoxville: City dedicates Urban Wilderness Gateway Park

Mountain bikes ripped through ribbons July 23 as city officials, designers and outdoor aficionados marked the opening of an impressive entrance to the city's 500-acre Urban Wilderness. The "ribbon-cutting" had been delayed for months because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The park is at the terminus of the James White Parkway, which once was planned to slice through what eventually became a regional recreational and environmental asset five minutes (by car) from downtown.

"Phase 1 investment built the park’s infrastructure: neighborhood connections, roads and greenways, lighting and utility installation. The most visible part of Phase 1 is the Baker Creek Bike Park, which was dedicated in August 2020," according to a news release from the city.

"Phase 2, beginning in Fall//Winter 2021, will see construction of the adventure playground at Baker Creek Preserve, restroom facilities, shade structures and picnic areas, as well as new play features and gathering spaces."

Alan Sims has coverage of the event on his excellent Knoxville-centric blog.

Published in Feedbag

frsunflowersNot all of the Knoxville Urban Wilderness is true wilderness, of course. This monoculture field of sunflowers planted at the Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area does, however, attract lots of wildlife.  Courtesy Visit Knoxville

Spring study to quantify visitation, economic impact

Physically, the Urban Wilderness is 1,000 acres of natural and recreational land in South Knoxville. Visitors can enjoy hiking across Civil War battlefields, running on naturally surfaced trails, swimming in old quarries, and mountain biking on expertly designed tracks. But the Urban Wilderness is much more than a place. 

“It’s something special for Knoxville and defines us as a recreational community,” said city Deputy Chief of Economic and Community Development Rebekah Jane Justice. She was named the city’s first Urban Wilderness Coordinator in July 2017, and is still the city’s go-to expert on this ambitious, ongoing land-preservation and recreational project. “It’s about so many things, including building our local economy in a unique way.” 

The Urban Wilderness is, many will say, a boon to Knoxville’s economy, both in increasing tourism and for the businesses around it, including coffee shops, breweries, and restaurants. But hard numbers about its impact are still being developed. In 2015, University of Tennessee economics professor Charles Sims wrote a white paper projecting that if the Urban Wilderness grew to a national destination, it could have an economic impact of more than $29 million annually. 

Now that the Urban Wilderness is more established, actual numbers about usage are more easily captured than when Sims authored his paper. Matthew Kellogg of the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club said that his club received an equipment grant from the International Mountain Bicycling Association for trail-counter devices to quantify how many people use the trails — and where and when. Currently Kellogg’s group is calibrating 11 newly placed trail counters in the Urban Wilderness. By spring, the group hopes to be collecting reliable data. 

Among the things this data will be used for is a multi-year study by University of Tennessee kinesiology and recreation professor Eugene Fitzhugh, a frequent lecturer about urban trails their impact on a community’s physical activity.   

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