About the Park
At 4,500 acres, Shelby Farms Park is a place of grand scale and great opportunity.
Between 1929 and 1964 Shelby Farms was a penal farm--a place where prison inmates provided agricultural labor to supply food for inmates and sold overproduction on behalf of the state. The Shelby County Penal Farm was considered an innovative model for productive and sustainable internment. Prison representatives from all over the country came to Memphis to observe the penal farm operations. The crops were bountiful and eventually even produced a profit.
By the middle 1960’s, the nature of the prison population had changed, and the work farm model was no longer a practical application for the inmates. By 1970 the 4,500 acres of land that was the Shelby County Penal Farm was declared surplus, and Shelby County Government began evaluating proposals for selling the property for commercial, residential and office development. But resistance from the citizens was immediate and fierce. People had already begun coming out to Shelby Farms regularly – first to train dogs, ride horses and bird watch; but eventually to run, hike, fish, picnic, and otherwise recreate. The man-made lakes and sloping landscapes that had been established to support the Penal Farm crops and farm animals were quickly put to good use to support the burgeoning recreational activities. A loud message was sent to Shelby County Government about how the people wanted the land used. They wanted Shelby Farms to be a park. From this grassroots community effort emerged the beginnings of what was to become the Friends of Shelby Farms Park.
In 1975, the “Shelby Farms Public Use Program” was adopted by County Government. Funded in large part by local business and civic leader Abe Plough and written by a team headed by a nationally known landscape architect by the name of Garrett Eckbo, the plan called for a great pastoral park at Shelby Farms that would become “a potential landscape to be enjoyed for its own sake (and) the special quality that will make it competitive with any and all of the great parks of the world.” While the plan was officially adopted, it was never implemented.
In 1982, 1,000 acres south of Walnut Grove were granted to the Agricenter for agricultural research, demonstrations and education. Showplace Arena was built as an equestrian center. Showplace Arena was under management of Shelby County Government until 2005 when Shelby County entered into a lease with Agricenter International to manage that property. In 1988, the Tennessee Legislature created the Lucius Burch Natural Area. In 1991, Agricenter International became the location of the international headquarters of Ducks Unlimited.
Over the years there have been various proposals for shopping centers, a wildlife preserve, golf courses and conference centers. All of those proposals were met with fierce resistance from a community determined to protect Shelby Farms as a public park.
In 1994, the Shelby County Mayor appointed a Shelby Farms Management Board, which operated largely in an advisory capacity until 2006.
Over a 30 year period, multiple proposals could have bifurcated Shelby Farms with overly destructive roadways, but again and again, citizens (led by Friends of Shelby Farms) came to the park’s defense. By 2004 there was a new understanding among the park’s friends that population density shifts to the east and north of Shelby Farms Park would require a balanced road solution that included the park. A context-sensitive solutions process that was promoted by the Friends of Shelby Farms and initiated by Mayor A C Wharton resulted in a road compromise that will balance park aesthetic and recreation needs with vehicular traffic requirements. When finally built, Shelby Farms Parkway will replace Farm Road for north-south traffic through Shelby Farms. The parkway will be a constrained, winding, landscaped parkway situated along the far western edge of the park that will include multiple crossings for all different kinds of park users. It will substantially improve motorist commute time while providing an enhanced park experience for cars, bikes, pedestrians and park users.
In 2001, businessman and civic leader Ron Terry developed a proposal for a conservation easement, management conservancy and master plan for Shelby Farms. Over 20 million dollars in private donations would have been committed to the park had the proposal passed through the multiple political hurdles required to establish the conservancy. Sadly, the proposal did not pass. But the groundwork was laid for a new effort to realize the community’s dream of protecting Shelby Farms as a park, and bringing it to its full potential as a great American park.
With the divisive road debate largely behind them, the board of directors of Friends of Shelby Farms Park unanimously agreed to reorganize into the Shelby Farms Park Alliance, with a new mission to “work with all parties toward the common goal of generating public and private support for Shelby Farms Park”. The Shelby Farms Park Alliance raised the public profile of the park by actively engaging political and community leaders in an aspirational vision for the future of the park, building park support through park memberships, and creating park programs and events to draw diverse support and usage of Shelby Farms Park.
With green hands and courageous hearts, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton and Shelby County Commissioner Mike Carpenter offered the solid leadership that enabled the park to clear two major milestones that will lead to its eventual status of one of the world’s great urban parks. The first of those milestones came in December of 2006 when the Shelby County Commission approved a conservation easement for the park. The easement allows current and future park uses but heavily restricts inappropriate commercial development. The park will be closely monitored by the Land Trust for Tennessee, ensuring that the covenants in the easement are honored. The second major milestone was realized in July of 2007, when an historic partnership was formed between the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy and Shelby County government. The Conservancy, a 501(c)3, nonprofit organization, is now the administrative entity responsible for the day to day operations and management of all of the Shelby Farms parkland outside of the Agricenter and Area 10. The Shelby Farms Park Conservancy is also responsible for the development of a comprehensive master plan which will become the park’s roadmap to achieving greatness.
Currently, the 4,500 acres of Shelby Farms Park is home to more than 20 bodies of water, several paved, multi-use trails and primitive trails, the Lucius Burch Natural Area, the Agricenter International Expo Center, Showplace Arena, Farmer’s Market, Catch’em Lake, a disc golf course, a kite-flying field and model airplane field, a playground, horse stables, paddle boats, pavilions, an amphitheater, a Visitor Center, a herd of American Bison, a dog park, and more. The northwest quadrant of Shelby Farms (referred to as “Area 10”) contains the Shelby County Prison, Shelby County office buildings, the new home of the Memphis and Shelby County Humane Society, and the future location of the 911 Call Center.
It is estimated that the park receives about a million visits a year. There are several park “user groups” that are active at the park. They include the Shelby Farms Equestrian Society, the Mid South Trails Association, the Shelby Farms Disc Golf Society and the Tornado Alley Sailing Club, to name a few.
The Shelby Farms Park Conservancy currently has three staff members. During a 90 day transition period (that began on August 1st) the nine park maintenance employees will remain on the Shelby County Government payroll. After November 1st all employees at the park are expected to be Conservancy employees.
Years of under-funding of park operations has resulted in serious problems at Shelby Farms Park. The system of sloughs that once connected all of the northern lakes at Shelby Farms has degraded, and water levels in the lower lakes have suffered. As playground equipment at the park has become broken, funds were not available to have it replaced. There are numerous other structural problems that need to be addressed. And with a new vision for greatness and a roadmap to get there the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy will be able to attract the dollars required to improve and maintain the park’s natural resources and supporting facilities and to add new park features and generators that will attract many new park users.
Shelby Farms can be the greatest metropolitan park of the 21st Century and a model for the future. It can provide a new concept of thinking about the blending of the natural and the urban - and new ways of approaching creative, outdoor play in a mature, technological age.
Shelby Farms Park can be a place where every activity and every facility supports the ecology, the economy, and the very fabric of the neighborhoods, the city and the region.
Shelby Farms Park can be a community living room for the hundreds of thousands of people who live in Shelby County – and a powerful attractor for the highly desired knowledge-based workers of the 21st century.
Shelby Farms can be an urban forest, a civic playground, a model for health and sustainability. It can be a standard-setting prototype for parks around the world.
Shelby Farms Park can have a vision so compelling, a future so bright that it will ignite the entire region.
