The Cumberland Trail State Park is about to become 300 acres larger.
Tomorrow, Crossville-based Plateau Properties will make an outright gift of its holdings on Brady Mountain to the Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation.
General Manager Rob Harrison says the timeline has been sped up because his family wanted to honor legendary Tennessee trails advocate Bob Brown who was recently diagnosed with cancer.
“We considered selling it but we decided that needed to happen quickly and it probably-because of Bob’s illness-was best just to go ahead and do it. Get it done.”
Brady Mountain’s rocky ridge has an elevation of 29-hundred feet. The donation includes its southeast side, known as Grassy Knoll, and the entrance to historic Saltpeter Cave.
Harrison says the land was used for timber by the federal government’s Homestead project before his grandfather bought it in the late 1940s. Twenty years later, Harrison’s father, Arthur Harrison, began working with Brown to create a hiking path stretching diagonally across the state from Chattanooga to Kentucky.
When the state began building the trail in 1998, Harrison says his family wanted Brady Mountain to become part of the park in memory of their father and in honor of Bob Brown.
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