Tires to Trails: A Full Circle Project

How could 25,000 waste tires, a closed state park golf course, and a historically economically distressed community come together to create one of the first full circle sustainability projects of its kind? The Tires to Trails project has done just that by creating a project that simply means more than the sum of its parts.

After more than half a century of operation, the golf course at T.O. Fuller State Park was closed in 2011 in an effort to save money during tighter budgetary years. Since then, the greens of the course have transformed into a thriving native grassland and prairie space for wildlife. Additionally, a new state-of-the- art interpretive center has been built at the site that focuses on green energy and sustainable building practices. These two things are incredible additions to the community and greatly increase the park’s opportunity to educate youth on the outdoors and sustainability. However, one thing remained in disrepair: the old crumbling asphalt golf-cart paths. In such a beautiful and inspiring area of the park, it was always a frustration to see the cart paths, now used mainly by school groups during field trips or by community members for walking, literally crumbling beneath users’ feet. These paths were often found to be too rough for children’s bicycles or strollers. And at times they would abruptly end as nature had swallowed up entire portions of the pavement.

In mid-2018 a group of Tennessee State Park staff met with local government and community members to discuss how to revitalize the trail system of T.O. Fuller State Park. At 80 years old, with the park being built in 1938 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, it was in need some love. T.O. Fuller State Park was the first state park east of the Mississippi River, and only the second in the country, open to people of African descent. So as one can imagine, the park is not only important to the history of the community, but to the nation. Numerous traditional solutions for revitalization were discussed. But unfortunately, many of them did not fit the needs of the community or the financial abilities of the state. Eventually, during the meeting, the TN State Parks statewide trails program suggested the possibility of using a new type of surfacing they had been experimenting with at other parks around the state. This surfacing was called flexible porous pavement. Rather than being based on cement like concrete, or petroleum like asphalt, this surface was based on recycled tire rubber. This new surfacing type had many advantages over concrete and asphalt, such as being made of recycled material, being very porous to water, and being more resilient when used in a natural environment. The group liked this idea and asked the trails program to pursue options for its use at the park. Over the next several weeks the trails program staff took measurements of the existing trails, tweaked the overall trail design to make it more functional, and calculated the amount of surfacing needed for the area and what it would cost.

During the next meeting the trails program presented their findings to the group about how the area could be renovated, along with some grant information that would help pay for the resurfacing. The group seemed very responsive to this suggestion now that they were presented with a more detailed picture. During the same meeting, the staff member shared some concern of things they noticed when they travelled into the park for each visit: Tires. During each drive into and out of the park they constantly noticed illegally dumped tires along roadways, in abandoned lots, in ditches, etc. And this wasn’t just a few tires, this was hundreds, maybe even thousands along one route in and out of the park, all within a couple of miles. This spurred the program to think more deeply about this renovation project at the park and how they could make it more of a community wide project. How could their recycled pavement project help the community at large? The group liked this idea and started thinking about a bigger picture. Sure, they could just buy crumb rubber and pave the trails, but they desired for the project to have a wider impact on the community as a whole. The desire was to simply make the project mean more.

A few weeks later, they came together for a final time to discuss their findings after some substantial research and planning conversations with more local non-profits and community groups. What they decided on was the Tires to Trails project. This full-circle project that would help alleviate a major community issue and turn it into a high-quality recreational resource. This project would leverage three grant funding sources, require extensive cooperation between several governmental agencies, and buy-in from local community groups and non-profits. Though the project never sounded easy, the idea seemed to be a hit and it was officially put into motion. It was decided that the Tennessee State Parts Trails Program would head the project and be responsible for its management moving forward.

The Tires to Trails Project can essentially be broken up in to two parts: 1. The collection and recycling/disposal of illegally dumped scrap tires and 2. The renovation/construction of a 2.6 mile hard surface walking and biking trail at T.O. Fuller State Park. While these two pieces could have easily existed without one another, creating a full circle project was very important. It was felt this extra effort was owed to the Boxtown community that surrounds T.O. Fuller State Park. This community has been one of the most economically distressed neighborhoods of Memphis for decades. Between broken governmental promises and poor policy decisions, the community was often dealt a tough hand compared to the areas around it. The trail project could have an impact not only on the park, but also on the surrounding neighborhoods, ensuring that the project was doing what it could to fight inequity where possible.

Part one of the project was funded by a Special Litter Grant from TDOT. This grant for $200,000 was used to pay for the collection and recycling/disposal of tires that had been illegally dumped in and around T.O. Fuller State Park. By utilizing volunteers and paid local contractors, the project was able to clean up over 24,000 illegally dumped tires. As mentioned before, these tires were collected from a variety of areas: abandoned houses, wetlands, roadside ditches, etc. Several thousand of these tires were also heavy equipment tires that took many volunteers and equipment to remove. Our partnership with the city of Memphis, Shelby County, and Memphis City Beautiful was integral for us to be able to complete this portion of the task. Our first pick up day was on January 21st, 2019, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Several state and local government officials were in attendance to show their support. Over 450 volunteers registered for the event that day and even the Commissioner of TDEC, David Salyers spent his first full day on the job in the mud picking up tires. In a little over 4 hours that day the first 10,000 tires were collected for the project. Over the next 18 months several other pick-up days were organized and over 14,000 additional tires were collected.

Once all the tires were collected, they were transported to Patriot Tire Recycling in Bristol, TN. Patriot is currently the only facility in TN that has the ability to recycle tires into the crumb that is needed for flexible porous pavement. This rubber crumb is comprised of pieces that are between 1/4” and 3/8” in size and all wire and most of the fabric are removed. Once the tires were recycled into the needed crumb, it was brought back to the park in preparation for the construction of the trail.

This is where the second portion of the project began. By combining a Tire Environmental Act Program grant from the Office of Policy and Sustainable Practices of TDEC worth $250,000 and a Recreational Trails Program grant from the Federal Highway Administration worth $280,000 the project was able to create a reimagined 2.6 mile hard surface trail system. This trail system largely utilizes existing cart paths at the old golf course, though many new connections have been made in order to make a more sensible and modern “loop” trail design. This trail system is not only be completely hard surfaced and therefore more accessible but will also have specific sections that are completely ADA compliant. It has always been the goal of the trail program to create trails that can be enjoyed by all of our visitors, regardless of ability level.

The Tires to Trails encompasses many things, but it could have easily just been one thing, if many great agencies, non-profits, and invested community members had not strived to make it more. It simply could have been a tire collection, or a trail resurfacing, or a trail system creation. But it became all three of those things because some very hard-working people were determined to give the park and its surrounding community something to be proud of. This project stands as a blueprint for other parks not only in Tennessee, but in the nation, as to how to create a truly full circle project. By seeing a community’s blight and not only fixing it, but then taking it and turning it into a resource that all can use to better their physical and mental health.

Overall, this project has been a great success. It has rid a community of over 24,000 waste tires that were indiscriminately discarded. It then took those tires, which are normally just disposed of in a land fill and instead recycled them into a usable rubber crumb. That rubber crumb was then brought back to the community where those tires were collected and used to create a high-quality greenway trail for guests to enjoy and use for safe recreation. No one single government agency, non-profit, or otherwise could have completed this project by themselves. Though it took years and tremendous planning and group cooperation, its success plants a flag in the ground that proudly displays to others what can be achieved when there is determination, ingenuity, and collaboration. Our stewardship does not have to stop at our boundaries, as parks are pillars in our communities that help keep us strong. By making our recreational projects mean more we are able to better serve our communities that entrust us with projecting the natural spaces in their backyards.

This project was lucky enough to receive support from the Society of Outdoor Recreation Professionals in the form of their 2022 Project Excellence Award during the National Outdoor Recreation Conference.

The project was also given special recognition by the Office of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. It was awarded the 2023 Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award for Natural Resource Management.

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More winners of this award

2021: Waterloo Valley Trail Bridge

2020: Maricopa Trail Volunteer Stewardship Program

2019: Duck River Reservoir Recreation Area

2017: Rountree Branch Trail - Platteville, Wisconsin

2016: Eureka Trail - Tennessee