Pickett CCC Memorial State Park Wins Awards for Excellence in Customer Engagement, Resource Management
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) has honored Pickett CCC Memorial State Park in Jamestown with the Excellence in Customer Engagement and Excellence in Resource Management awards among the 57 Tennessee State Parks. The awards are part of the annual Tennessee State Parks Awards of Excellence.
“Pickett CCC Memorial State Park’s recognition in two categories speaks to just how good its performance has been in the last year,” said Greer Tidwell, deputy commissioner of Conservation at TDEC. “We congratulate the park on these well-deserved honors.”
The Customer Engagement category of the awards is for parks that have demonstrated excellence in the areas of marketing, community outreach, social media, customer service, gift shops, and any other efforts that serve customers’ needs while they are in the park or engaging with the park.
An example of customer engagement came on Thanksgiving weekend when park rangers did a search and rescue to locate a family that had been lost overnight on the Hidden Passage trail. They found the hikers and made a point to recognize the children for being brave and surviving a night on the trail. In another example, Pickett staff coordinated with Radnor Lake State Park staff to accommodate a special needs request for a glow worm hike, communicating with the participants via email and coordinating efforts to assist. The hike was a resounding success, showing the importance of providing accessibility to all visitors.
The Resource Management category for the award includes parks that have demonstrated effective activities, natural or cultural, in managing resources within the park. Those activities can include but are not limited to invasive species management, historic preservation, rare species, inventory, landscape restoration, habitat enhancement or protection, pest management, and oral history collection.
The park’s resource management efforts this year covered a broad range of areas. The most significant projects focused on historic structures restoration, invasive species management, black bear management, habitat improvement, and honeybees.
Pickett CCC Memorial State Park lies within the 20,887 acres of Pickett State Forest and is adjacent to the massive 125,000-acre Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. In 1933, the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company donated nearly 12,000 acres of land to the State of Tennessee to be developed as a forest recreational area. Initial development of the area by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) occurred between 1934 through 1942. The CCC constructed hiking trails, five rustic cabins, a recreation lodge, a ranger station, and a 12-acre lake. The park memorializes and preserves the unique work of the CCC who first developed the park.
TDEC also announced awards for the best parks in the following categories: Booker T. Washington State Park in Innovation; Radnor Lake State Park for Interpretation; Johnsonville State Historic Park in Sustainability; and Seven Islands State Birding Park was named Park of the Year.