These Retirees Turned Their Tennessee Town Into a Hiking Paradise

It’s a balmy August afternoon and the metallic scrape and clang of shovels, pickaxes, and digging bars rings through the forest as I climb a beautifully cambered new trail toward a pair of house-sized boulders near the Peavine Mountain ridgeline. A group of about a dozen volunteers fans out along the hillside working to remove large, jagged stones from the roughed-in path and backfill holes with small rocks and a tamped layer of mineral soil.

They wear boots, jeans, or utility pants and matching fluorescent orange or green shirts emblazoned with circular chest logos that read, “Trails of Fairfield Glade.” All are over the age of 60, boast silvery hair or whiskers—and look fit for their years. The men and women are members of a seniors-only trail-building club that meets three or four times a week to work on a 30-ish-mile network of walking paths in the sprawling, 20,000-acre east Tennessee resort retirement community they call home. Once completed, the route they’re working on now will carry hikers around the boulders to an overlook with 2,100-foot views of lake-fronting neighborhoods and the greater Cumberland Plateau. The network will eventually connect to the 300-mile-long Cumberland Trail, which follows its namesake mountain range from Kentucky to Chattanooga and is currently in the final phases of construction.

“The crazy thing is that, when I moved here in 2011, there were no hiking trails at all,” says 74-year-old club founder and former electrical engineer John Conrad, in an elegantly clipped English accent. Trails of Fairfield Glade has since ballooned to include 150 regularly participating members and an equally popular sister organization that builds and promotes routes in and around the neighboring city of Crossville. The trail system is open to the public and the club hosts multiple guided social hikes a week. Virtually all of Fairfield Glade’s 9,000 residents (the majority of whom are seniors) use the paths and have attended at least one related event.

“People have really galvanized around what we’re doing,” says Conrad. “And I think that’s because, one, this is a stunningly beautiful place to live. And two, everyone who moves to this community comes here for that reason—they want to get away from the urban bustle and be closer to nature.”

Fairfield Glade sits in the rural Cumberland Mountains about 70 miles west of Knoxville. Homes are nestled into spacious wooded lots in neighborhoods that fan out along hillsides overlooking five championship-grade golf courses and 11 scenic lakes. What’s more, the development backs onto more than 120,000 protected acres in Cumberland Trail State Park and the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area.

“I spent most of my life in big cities like London and Boston, and while I loved a pretty walk, no one would have accused me of being a hiking enthusiast,” says Conrad. “But when I got here, I saw the immense potential and reached out to the [HOA board] pretty much immediately about founding a club. To my surprise, they seemed quite ecstatic about the idea.”

Conrad formed a nonprofit, put together a simple website, and made announcements in the community’s e-newsletter. Early workdays amounted to him and one or two pals bushwhacking through the forest to scout inaugural routes. They looked for ways to connect different neighborhoods within the development and showcase natural points of interest like creeks, bogs, gnarly old trees, wildflower meadows, stone cliffs, and overlooks.

“People would see us tromping about in the woods with flags and stakes and venture over to see what we were on about,” says Conrad. Word got around and pretty soon, “my email inbox was overwhelmed with questions of how to go about pitching in and we had 20 or more people showing up at a time.”

Financial generosity from new members and residents and a broad range of expertise helped transform the inchoate system into something special. Today, routes are loaded with features like gazebos, arched wooden bridges, stone staircases, boardwalks, and overlook retainer walls that would seem at home on the grounds of a wealthy estate.

Conrad says the club has retired engineers, contractors, arborists, airplane mechanics, and more. Each person shares their skillset and, as Conrad says, “we try to give that knowledge an outlet and put it to work as best we can.” The group contracts with a professional trailbuilding company to teach basic skills and sustainability practices to newcomers and cut the tread on trickier routes with special machinery.

Mary Jo Paige, Fairfield Glade’s marketing and events director, calls the system a major draw and deciding factor for many would-be transplants. It also helps attract visitors to a large fleet of vacation rentals.

“What the club has achieved and the community that they’ve built around these trails is pretty amazing,” she says. “People come to visit friends or family members and fall in love with the general beauty. Then they go for a walk and start asking questions about moving.”

That’s more or less what happened to retired professor and agricultural economist, Danny Terry.

“I earned my doctorate at the University of Tennessee and spent a day or two every week hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” says Terry, now 70. Treks to high-elevation views became inaccessible once he settled into a corn belt career at Western Illinois University, but “I dreamed of returning to Tennessee and doing a ton of hiking in my retirement.”

Terry moved to Fairfield Glade in 2015 after spending a week or so exploring the area. The trails and club were a big part of his and his wife’s decision to settle there. Terry joined the group shortly after relocating and now spends about 8 hours a week with the build crew and at least as much time hiking.

“It’s a great way to meet new friends, immerse yourself in nature, and stay physically active,” he says. Meanwhile, the work “gives me a sense of purpose. What we’re building here is helping to change the culture of this region, drive ecotourism, and hopefully be a source of enjoyment for generations to come.”

Conrad says that’s what inspired him to parlay hiking enthusiasm in Fairfield Glade into a larger regional organization called Crossville Trails around 2016. The group focuses on building routes in and around its namesake, 12,000-person city and is open to anyone in Cumberland County.

“Residents of the town were driving a dozen miles to hike in Fairfield Glade,” explains Conrad. “They’d have a walkabout then wonder why there wasn’t something similar in their community. So, I went to the economic development board and pitched them on creating just that.”

The city bought into the idea and has provided partial funding for nearly all of the group’s projects to date. More than 20 miles of interconnected trails have been installed so far and connectors to outdoor hotspots like Cumberland Mountain State Park are in the works. Partnerships with the city and local chamber of commerce, meanwhile, have brought annual events like hiking marathons and festivals.

“The impact on our community has just been immense,” says Paige, who lives in the county and sits on boards for the Crossville chamber of commerce and economic development commission. The affluence of residents in Fairfield Glade has combined with increases in outdoor tourism to fuel an ongoing renaissance that’s yielded new stay spots, outfitters, cafes, restaurants, breweries, wineries, and more. The Cumberland Trail is being routed through Fairfield Glade—thanks, in large part, to Conrad’s efforts—and, when it opens “we expect to see a significant economic boost.”

While Conrad says he’s thrilled by the municipal advances, he prefers to concentrate on trails.

“This has become my true passion,” he says. “I wake up every day excited to get to work and try to figure out how to build more paths and convince more people to get out there and enjoy both them and the wonderful nature they pass through.”

Spotting intergenerational friends and families in the woods wearing hike-induced grins? “To me, that’s what it’s all about,” says Conrad. “That’s what keeps me going.”