The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation announced last week that a Rhea County couple has sold a piece of property to the state which gets organizers closer to linking 300 miles of Tennessee hiking trails.

Dick and Joy Kinzalow of Dayton sold a 10-mile, 3,200-acre tract of land along Walden's Ridge between Sale Creek and Dayton to the state that will soon become part of the 300-mile Cumberland Trail State Park that stretches from Signal Mountain to the Tennessee-Kentucky-Virginia border.

The state funded the more-than-$4.5 million purchase through several federal and state grants and some private funds raised by the Cumberland Trail Conference.

The land preservation organization Land Trust for Tennessee also helped negotiate the terms of the deal with the Kinzalows and will put in place a permanent conservation easement on 2,197 acres of the tract.

The easement will ensure that the land will never be developed for industrial or commercial use or be subdivided for suburb-like neighborhoods.

Southeast Region Project Manager for the organization Tricia King said the land was a great find in terms of conservation.

"That whole property was just off the charts in terms of biodiversity," she said. "For it to belong to everyone in Tennessee as part of the Cumberland Trail is really a treasure."
King said Land Trust for Tennessee began negotiating with Dick Kinzalow in April 2008 and closed the deal last month.

Kinzalow said he began acquiring the property in the late '70s and purchased the last parcel 20 years later. His plan was always to find some way to preserve the landscape, though.

"The gorges are just beautiful," he said. "You have free-flowing streams coming out of the mountain. Around very bend there's something different."

Kinzalow said he has traversed much of the property via four-wheel drive vehicles.
Cumberland Trail Conference, the private organization creating the Cumberland Trail, will still have to map out its trailheads on the tract before trail construction can start, Kinzalow said.

The tract will become the third Cumberland Trail property in Rhea County. Laurel-Snow Trail (formerly known as Pocket Wilderness) near the Morgantown area and the Piney River Trail near the Grandview area are also part of the trail.

Kinzalow said the tract he recently sold won't quite connect with Laurel-Snow, though. There a few parcels of land that still separate the two.

The transaction marked the first dealings in Rhea County for Land Trust for Tennessee, and King said the organization is interested in talking with other landowners who want to preserve their land. Those interested don't have to sell their property in order to secure a conservation easement, she said.
"We're happy to talk to any other landowner who wants to conserve their land, even if they don't want to sell it, " she said.

Michael Reneau can be contacted at michael.reneau@rheaheraldnews.com.