As local restaurants and entertainment venues shutter their dining rooms and auditoriums, other public spaces are staying wide open—with the blessings of state officials.
Tennessee’s 56 state parks are still welcoming visitors who want to recreate while maintaining recommendations for social distancing.
“Basically our mission at this time is to provide a safe place for people to have an outlet in these hard times,” says Samantha Cox, a park ranger at Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park in northwest Shelby County. “We have almost 13,000 acres here, over 25 miles of trail...there’s always room for people to space out.”
Of course, people can still come into contact with one another in park areas—in bathrooms or visitor centers for instance.
But Jim Bryson, deputy commissioner with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEQ), says the parks are taking precautions, including limiting the number of people allowed in a facility at one time.
“We also have really increased our expectations around cleanliness—cleaning surfaces and other places that people might touch much, much more often.”
Bryson says TDEC is monitoring the situation “hour by hour” and will shut down visitor centers or bathrooms if necessary, though he wants people to have their public lands as long as it’s safe.
“I think it’s really beneficial for our state that we have a system of state parks that people can go out into,” he says. “They can get into nature, and they can become refreshed, and let a little bit of that worry, let it go.”
All parks are free to enter, and there’s one located within an hour of every Tennessee resident.