The Warner Parks -- Our Neighbors to the East

Edition 1. Issue 12.

 

The Warner Parks

When John and I were living in Green Hills in the 70s, it was still a sleepy little borough on the outskirts of the rapidly expanding city of Nashville.  My job at Bryan, Pendleton, Swats and McAllister was an easy walk from home and the mall was still a small grouping of retail stores with one large department store.  When we moved to Temple Hills in the early 80s, it felt like a long commute between my office and home. No matter which route I took, I drove through or beside one of the Warner Parks each way, just as all SV residents do. In every season there was beautiful wooded land to enjoy and very little traffic during rush hour. It was years later that I actually started researching the parks and found out just how many individuals and groups were responsible for creating and preserving the roughly 4,000 acres we know today as Edwin Warner Park and Percy Warner Park.

    The history of the Warner Parks begins with The Belle Meade Plantation.  In the early 1900s it was one of the world’s great thoroughbred stud farms.  One of the Belle Meade thoroughbreds, Iroquois, became the first American born and bred horse to win the English Derby.  He is still honored annually at the Percy Warner Park’s Iroquois Steeplechase that is attended each spring by thousands of hat-wearing race fans.  Even though the plantation survived the Civil War, it fell into decline financially and was sold in 1910 to Luke Lea and the Belle Meade Land Company for residential development.  Lea’s sweeping plans to convert Belle Meade Plantation into an upscale subdivision adjacent to a country club was ambitions, but he foresaw the benefits of easy access to thousands of wooded acres to be enjoyed by the leisure class.   In 1927 Lea gave to the city of Nashville 868 acres of hilly land. It was then up to Percy Warner, as chair of the Parks and Recreation Board to develop the then unnamed park.

   Percy Warner was a well-known businessman and nature lover who always focused on providing quality recreation for as many citizens as possible.  Upon his death, the original 868 acres was named Percy Warner Park.  After his death, Percy’s brother, Edwin, joined the park board and served as chairman until his death in 1945.  Edwin oversaw the planning and execution of the labor that transformed open land into multi-use municipal park acres including the steeplechase course.  He was instrumental in procuring the Works Project Administration during World War II to help with the building of the park and was able to increase the acreage from 868 to more than 2,600 acres.

   The New Deal and the WPA provided a much-needed influx of capital and labor which meant good jobs for many Nashvillians after the Great Depression. During the next several decades the Warner Parks became a controlled natural landscape for the enjoyment of the public, adding picnic shelters, hiking trails, golf courses, riding stables and a model airplane field.  I remember many autumn hayrides through the parks as a teenager in the 60s and my children enjoyed the annual Hot Air Balloon Festival that drew crowds of enthusiasts in the 70s.  My grandchildren are fans of the hiking trails and golf courses still going strong today.  The Nature Center has become a great resource for students and teachers.

   In 1990 an innovative team called “Special Warner Action Teens” came on board to help with park maintenance. Ten young people spent the summer working on the trails and their parents paid their salaries. This concept evolved into the volunteer group, “The Friends of Warner Parks”, that has taken care of the maintenance of hiking trails and picnic areas for over thirty years, adding the Harpeth River Greenway in 2008. This 9.2 mile paved trail follows the Harpeth River running through the former Devon Farm that is now Ensworth High School.  Also added in 2013, were eight miles of mountain bike trails.

   If you would like to find out more about the Parks, Lynne Bachleda has written a book, “A History of The Warner Parks”, which covers each decade in great detail. I particularly liked her quote at the end of the preface, “How fortunate we are that Luke Lea, Percy Warner, Edwin Warner and the individuals who surrendered their long-cherished family farms made a place to feel the forest, play the fields, see the stars and come to know our souls”.

Libbey Hagewood - Author