Adventures Start Here: Chattanooga's New Parks, Trails and Playgrounds - Livability.com (2024)

New attractions enhance the Greater Chattanooga's outdoor recreation scene. Find adventure and family fun in this nature lover's paradise.

By Cary Estes on August 13, 2024

With mountains standing majestically on all sides of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River flowing past downtown, it is easy to see why the region is popular for outdoor enthusiasts. There are plenty of things to do when it comes to parks and trails and recreation in general. But there is always room for more.

And in recent years, Greater Chattanooga has expanded its outdoor amenities by adding several new destinations, offering everything from the exhilaration of downhill mountain biking to family-fun activities at several inclusive playgrounds.

Walden’s Ridge Park: A Mountain Biker’s Dream

Leading the way is Walden’s Ridge Park, a 200-acre area off Signal Mountain just north of downtown Chattanooga. The park has trails for bikers and hikers and rock-climbing opportunities. After eight years of planning and development, the park opened in 2023 and quickly began averaging approximately 2,300 visitors per month, says Walden’s Ridge project manager Taft Sibley.

“Those numbers far exceeded any estimates we had,” Sibley says. “It’s been an incredible response to an incredible project.”

The idea for the park began after the North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy (NCCC) received a 200-acre land donation from a local family. Sibley, who was serving as the NCCC Board president at the time, says the organization began working with a number of entities to create Walden’s Ridge Park. These include the Land Trust for Tennessee, the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association, the Southeastern Climbers Coalition, and Hamilton County Parks and Recreation.

The park’s centerpiece is the mountain biking layout, with 12 miles of downhill trails that descend approximately 700 feet in elevation. NCCC worked with the International Mountain Bicycling Association to create trails with different degrees of difficulty to accommodate riders’ various experience levels.

Add in the boulders, along with the hiking/running trails that have scenic views of downtown Chattanooga and the Tennessee River Valley, and Sibley says Walden’s Ridge is “an adventure park on publicly owned land, which is something that you don’t find much in this part of the country.”

Parks, Pathways and Playgrounds

Walden’s Ridge is merely just one of the new parks and trails being introduced to Greater Chattanooga’s outdoor scene.

Tennessee’s newest state park — the 57th overall — is just a 45-minute drive north. Located in Grundy and Sequatchie counties, Savage Gulf State Park encompasses 60 miles of hiking trails within a 19,000-acre natural area.

Wildflowers flank many of the trails, which travel over sandstone cliffs and past scenic waterfalls.

In addition, the beautiful bluffs along the Great Stone Door trail offer visitors the opportunity to rock climb and rappel across seven designated routes.

Cumberland Trail State Park: Expanding into the Wilderness

A little farther north, near Spring City, Cumberland Trail State Park recently expanded by more than 350 acres with the acquisition of Piney River Bluffs in Rhea County.

The addition enables the nearly 300-mile-long Cumberland Trail to connect to the 816-acre Piney Falls State Natural Area and the Soak Creek Scenic River, as well as to 30 more miles of trails that pass through some of the region’s most remote areas.

Connecting Communities: New Trails in Alabama and Georgia

There are new and fun adventures south of Chattanooga as well. The 200-plus mile Singing River Trail that stretches across northern Alabama now extends into Jackson County, and the path will eventually reach all the way to the Tennessee state line.

In 2023, the 34-mile multiuse River to Clouds Trail opened in northwest Georgia, running from Cloudland Canyon State Park to the base of Lookout Mountain, where it connects with Chattanooga’s greenway system.

Inclusive Playgrounds: Fun for Everyone

Catering to families, new inclusive playgrounds are opening in Grundy County (named the Miracle on the Mountain Play Outside Park), at the Walker County Civic Center and at Chattanooga’s Riverview Park.

“When you have cities, counties and nonprofits working together to create these types of attractions, it enhances the quality of life for everybody,” Sibley says. “And Chattanooga is the perfect place for it. Because wherever rivers and mountains come together, people like to play.”

Chattanooga: Aspiring to be North America’s First National Park City

Chattanooga is vying to become the first National Park City in North America.

Census figures show that approximately 80% of people in the U.S. live in what is classified as an urban area. But living in a city does not have to mean living away from nature.

That is the thinking behind the National Park City Foundation (NPCF), a global initiative designed to promote the nature, culture and heritage that can be found within urban settings. London became the first National Park City in 2019, followed by Adelaide, Australia, in 2021. Glasgow, Scotland, and Rotterdam, Netherlands, are among the cities currently in contention.

Chattanooga is now looking to join this exclusive list. The city has already gone through several steps of the qualifying process in advance of NPCF officials’ scheduled visit in fall 2024. If selected, Chattanooga will earn the honor of becoming the first National Park City in North America.

“The thought is, how do we unify around the idea that we should curate and shape our cities to be habitable places for people and wildlife,” says Scott Martin, Chattanooga Parks & Outdoors administrator. “Instead of treating cities as these little silos where people work in one place and nature is in another, make it all one system.”

Martin says that receiving the National Park City designation would be only the first step in the larger goal of making Chattanooga even better than it already is.

“What if we get it right and build the most livable city in North America? Let’s start from that proposition,” Martin says. “We’re not trying to be the next whatever. We just want to be the best Chattanooga possible.”