Photo Credit: Rich Yaeger
Morgan County
Obed Wild & Scenic River National Park (Clear Creek)
Project Partners
Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, National Park Service
TennGreen Land Conservancy, Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, and partners have completed a successful campaign to purchase 240 acres of forested bluff lands along Clear Creek.
OVERVIEW
In 2023, Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning (TCWP) alerted TennGreen Land Conservancy to a property for sale containing the largest privately held inholding along the Clear Creek section of the Obed Wild & Scenic River National Park. Although a portion of the land is within the formal congressional Park boundary, at that time, the land was still under private ownership.
National Parks cannot buy land outside of the boundary without an act of Congress, so TennGreen stepped in to purchase the entire property with the intention to sell the boundary section to the National Park Service (NPS) as soon as possible. The land outside the boundary will be sold to NPS once the Congressional boundary is revised (likely 5-6 years) to protect the viewshed and the forest quality.
Without this process, these inholdings could have been sold to a private buyer on the open market, and the acquisition of the property could have been delayed indefinitely… and perhaps permanently.
WHY THIS LAND?
This land is along the exceptional Clear Creek, an area beloved by paddlers, climbers, and adventurers of all kinds. Designated as an International Dark Sky Park in 2017 due to the park’s exceptional night sky conditions and commitment to preserving the dark sky, land protection along the Obed Wild & Scenic River will limit potential light pollution as well as protect critical habitat and beautiful, clean waters. If sold to a private developer, structures could have been built along the riverbank or canyon rim—risking its sense of wildness.
Protecting this land is also critical for the conservation of sensitive and threatened resources, including numerous archeological sites and federally listed plant and animal species located on or adjacent to the property.
Numerous rare species have been documented in Clear Creek downstream of the property. These include the endangered hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis), threatened spotfin chub (Ermonax monachus), and deemed in need of management tangerine darter (Percina aurantiaca). The threatened Cumberland rosemary (Conradina verticillata) has been documented along the Clear Creek border of the property.
In 2025, TennGreen acquired additional land along Clear Creek. Similar to the first parcel, this land contains acreage that lies both within and outside of the current Congressional boundary of the park. Ultimately, the footprint of this conservation expansion will contain more than 200 acres of beautiful land held by the National Park Service, whose mission is to conserve the natural and cultural resources of the U.S. and the world.
