Rebirth of the Wolf

How an urban river was brought back to life.

August 29, 2022

8:00 AM

photograph by nick wiggins / courtesy wolf river greenway

The new 270-foot cable-stayed pedestrian bridge located at the Wolf River Crossing connects the Wolf River Greenway to the Germantown Greenway.

When it comes to facilities for biking, hiking, kayaking, and other outdoor activities, Memphis has made astonishing progress in recent years. The city and environs now offer more than 300 miles of biking and hiking trails and lanes.

Designated trails include: the Shelby Farms Greenline (11 miles from Midtown to Cordova), the Riverline (five miles in Memphis, including the Big River Crossing to Arkansas, plus seven miles of trails on the other side of the Mississippi River), the Hampline (two miles that extend the Greenline to Overton Park), and the Wolf River Greenway (14 miles along the Wolf River in several segments).

In addition, various parks have miles and miles of trails, including Overton Park, T.O. Fuller State Park, Shelby Farms Park, and Shelby Forest State Park, to name just four. And you can kayak in Shelby Farms, Shelby Forest, and the Wolf River Harbor (and on the Mississippi if you’re more adventurous).

Today, Memphis offers a cornucopia of possibilities for outdoor enthusiasts. But it wasn’t always this way.

photograph by nick wiggins / courtesy wolf river greenway

Another view of the bridge after a snowstorm.

“Pronounced Dead”

Keith Cole has been the director of the Wolf River Conservancy since 2010. He’s well-versed in the organization’s history — and the troubled backstory of the urban sections of the Wolf River.

“In the 1950s, the city had a problem with the Wolf because it was so polluted,” he says. “Basically, it was so foul, it literally stunk.”

photograph by nick wiggins / courtesy wolf river greenway

Keith Cole

A few headlines in The Commercial Appeal from the summer of 1950 make his point: “The Wolf Will Cast a Smell This Summer”; “Those Soft Summer Breezes Off the Lazy-Flowing Wolf River to Cast Miasmatic Smell”; “Wolf No Lamb, Even If City Diverts It.”

Even given the corny headline style of the era, it was obvious the city had a problem. The Memphis section of the Wolf River was essentially an open sewer and garbage dump that split the city and fouled the air in adjacent neighborhoods from Germantown through Cordova, Raleigh, Frayser, and New Chicago to the river’s mouth in Downtown Memphis. It was a sad fate for a river that is sourced in pristine Baker’s Pond in Holly Springs National Forest, offered a popular bathing beach in Raleigh, and once provided drinking water for the city of Memphis.

The problem persisted for two more decades. “A headline in a 1970 Commercial Appeal article probably sums it up best,” says Cole. “It read, ‘Wolf River Is Examined and Pronounced Dead.’”

The accompanying story describes a trip the Bluff City Canoe Club took along an urban section of the river: “Not once during their five-mile trip did they report encountering a breath of fresh, clean air,” it read. “One of the boaters described the odors that clung to the river as varying from sour to oily to caustic. Their route was clogged by a flotsam of bed springs, old tires, bottles, cans, washing machines, ice-boxes, rags, dead animals, and even a casket, complete with handles.”

Maybe the casket was intended for the river itself. Howard Vogel Jr., a radiology professor at the University of Tennessee Medical Units, was quoted as saying: “In my opinion as a biologist, the Wolf River is dead, as a body of water.”

photograph by nick wiggins / courtesy wolf river greenway

The Wolf River Greenway meets the Shelby Farms Greenline at the Lucius Burch State Natural Area.

The Comeback Begins

In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which banned the dumping of pollutants and trash into the nation’s waterways, and the Wolf began to slowly recover. In 1981, a group of environmentally minded citizens, led by environmental engineer Charles M. Cooley, began organizing to urge for governmental protection for the remaining natural areas along the Wolf in the city.

The Bluff City Canoe Club was again involved. The CA reported that same year on another Wolf River trip taken by the club. Their report was considerably more optimistic than the one from nine years earlier: “We don’t recommend swimming in it,” said the Canoe Club’s Joseph Hart, “but we’d like others to see what we see on the Wolf — its large areas of trees and wildlife. … You don’t even realize you’re in the city most of the time.”

In 1985, the group’s efforts paid off with the official formation of the Wolf River Conservancy, backed by a seemingly unlikely source, the Memphis Board of Realtors, which saw a potentially healthy Wolf River as an asset to the community — and to potential home values, one assumes.

photo courtesy memphis public libraries

In the early 1900s, the Wolf River was clean enough for Memphians to make it a popular swimming destination, complete with a sandy beach.

Even before the WRC was formed in 1985, canoeists and kayakers had been floating the upper Wolf, which still retained much of its natural beauty.

“In 1991, some WRC board members established the Ghost River canoe trail,” says Cole. “It’s an eight-mile stretch between LaGrange and the Bateman Bridge near Moscow. Most people know it today as the Ghost River and are aware that it’s beautiful and pristine. Back then, not as many people knew about it.”

The section was notable for the frequency with which paddlers lost their way, so the WRC added canoe trail markers in 1992 to encourage more visitors. But there was an ever-present fear that despite the natural beauty of the Ghost River section, the adjacent land could be logged or farmed or otherwise negatively impacted, so the WRC began leading and encouraging more trips through the Ghost River section in order to raise awareness. The hope was that if enough people experienced the Ghost River section, they could be convinced to help save it, if that became necessary.

photograph by nick wiggins / courtesy wolf river greenway

This boardwalk traverses the Lucius Burch State Natural Area. Prior to the Wolf River Greenway’s completion, access to the L.B.S.N.A. was limited. Private donations funded this segment of the greenway.

Fears Are Realized

It did indeed become necessary.

The following passage is from the Wolf River Conservancy’s website: “In 1995, the Wolf River Conservancy’s worst fears were realized when a timber and development firm purchased a 4,000-acre plantation from the Beasley family which encompassed 5 miles of the 8-mile Ghost River section. This plantation also included over 1,000 acres of highly developable uplands.

“The timber and development firm planned to strip the timber and then auction off hundreds of parcels of the old plantation for ‘ranchettes.’ The firm paid $3 million for the tract. Wolf River Conservancy asked the new owners how much they would sell it for, and the answer was $4 million. Still an organization of volunteers alone, the Wolf River Conservancy had only four months to raise the $4 million needed to rescue the Ghost River section from destruction.”

“Of course, the WRC didn’t have any way to come up with $4 million,” says Cole. “But they organized and reached out to the community for support and wrote letters to the newspapers and legislators. What really saved the day was that hundreds of people reached out to Governor Sundquist.”

Don Sundquist, newly elected in 1995, was a former congressman from Memphis. He agreed that the state would come up with $3 million if the WRC could raise the final $1 million. They came up “slightly” short, raising $60,000. But an angel appeared in the form of eccentric (and generous) Millington businessman Babe Howard, who agreed to borrow the $1 million on the condition that the WRC pay him back as soon as possible.

It took the group two years, but they managed to do it. The WRC also formed partnerships with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) to save additional acreage.

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