Dedication held for Middle Fork Bottoms State Park
THREE WAY, Tenn. — Middle Fork Bottoms State Park is located in Three Way in Madison County. It has been a long time coming for this area to become a state park. Now that the moment is here, many people gathered Monday morning to celebrate.
“Governor Lee’s focus in this administration has been to really try and help people fall in love with Tennessee,” said Greer Tidwell, Deputy Commissioner for Conservation, TDEC. “To enable to get outdoors, develop their capacity as stewards of what makes Tennessee beautiful. As a state park, it goes from a place where folks are welcomed to come, to a place where you are welcome, but also actively invited.”
This area is prone to flooding. In fact, one of the big reasons for why this state park is so important, is to make sure that when it floods, it floods in the right areas.
“We’ve been farming these lands for years and years and years,” Tidwell said. “Governor Lee and other conservation leaders have said we need to be looking ahead to how this land can serve in the way it was naturally designed to help minimize those flood risks.”
It was said throughout the day that this park is just going to keep growing and becoming even more beautiful than it already is. Tidwell explains more.
“What we have in the state park here, right now, is like a garden. You don’t finish a garden. You just keep developing it out and taking care of it, maintaining it, and letting it blossom, and get fuller and fuller. So that’s the vision here,” said Tidwell.
The park has 250,000 recently planted trees, over 200 acres of restored wetlands, and two miles of restored stream.
The park also has four fishing areas, paddle craft access to the Middle Fork Forked Deer River, and five miles of walking trails.
It’s located at 111 Sanders Bluff Road in Three Way.
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