Chattanooga Times Free Press - Editorial
Monday, December 15, 2003, p 15

   Gov. Bredesen, while you are here, please jumpstart the stalled paperwork needed to fulfill the congressional act creating the Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District.

   You can do so by simply directing the bureaucracy under you to quickly execute a title transfer conveying the bulk of the state land around the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Hospital to the National Park Service.

   Make no mistake. Jump-starting the creation of the Moccasin Bend national park district is as vital to Chattanooga’s future economic development as is Enterprise South.

   One is not more important than the other; such a formulation would miss the point.

   Rather, they are equally vital because they round out the full picture of Chattanooga’s potential. Enterprise South establishes a noteworthy industrial park on a scale previously unseen in Chattanooga. Creation of the Moccasin Bend park provides the city the ultimate amenity, and a wholly unique way to embellish the city’s stature.

   The 672-acre tract of land designated for the national park contains significant, well-documented native American archaeological treasures dating back more than 10,000 years, in addition to more recent Trail of Tears and Civil War sites. That has been further confirmed by the Park Service’s endorsement of the long-standing proposal to create the park.

   There are no known obstacles to the title transfer. The whole arrangement to create the park already has been agreed on at the local, state and federal level over the past five years.

   Of the state’s share of the designated park land, 78.6 acres would be retained by the state for the hospital and its presently used grounds.

   An expeditious transfer of the remaining 245.4 acres of the state’s tract to the NPS would satisfy well-documented previous agreements by all parties regarding creation of the park.

   It also would prompt the city and county to complete their title transfers; they are waiting, and reasonably so, for the state — the most distant partner — to initiate the actual title transfers. The hospital board has explicitly recommended the transfer of the unused, but historically vital, portion of the state land to the National Park Service. And the Army Corps of Engineers is waiting — with a $500,000 grant in hand delivered by Rep. Zach Wamp — to complete the riverbank stabilization around the Bend. That work cannot proceed until all the land is under federal title.

   The state’s unexplained delay in transferring the title is holding up all this work, and more. Transfer of the land, and execution of the park’s creation documents, is necessary to allow the NPS staff to proceed with planning work for the park, and for the Friends of Moccasin Bend to proceed formally with fund-raising and planning for an interpretive center.

   In fact, so much is riding on the state’s execution of the Moccasin Bend land title transfer that, after all these years of waiting, Chattanoogans involved in the project are anxious.

   It is urgent that the Army Corps of Engineers’ work proceed with the riverbank stabilization while funds are available. Moreover, completion of the park along the city’s riverfront is equally urgent if the city is going to continue to compete for attention with other rising Southern cities.

   You are here symbolically to spur economic development, governor. Please don’t wait any longer to assure the Moccasin Bend national park’s concrete role in that vital effort.