At one end of Gunbarrel Road is one of Chattanooga’s most recognizable markers of growth.
What once was a quiet rural route has become the city’s premier commercial corridor, lined with shopping centers, restaurants, hotels and the sprawling Hamilton Place district. Cars stream through the area at all hours and new development seems perpetually underway.
At the other end is a narrow road called North Sanctuary Road. It passes through a residential neighborhood and dead-ends at a place where almost nothing has changed on purpose.
Audubon Acres, a 130-acre nature sanctuary tucked beside South Chickamauga Creek, has spent more than 80 years resisting the forces that transformed nearly everything around it.
Audubon Acres was established in 1944 by naturalist Robert Sparks Walker, who fought to keep the property intact after his siblings sought to sell their shares.
“He wanted to preserve this property for future generations,” says Jessica Whitehorn, Audubon Acres’ education director.
Walker eventually bought his siblings’ shares, with the help of a benefactor who purchased the remaining land and donated it back to him. The property became the Chattanooga Audubon Society’s headquarters and remains one of the city’s oldest conservation efforts.
A sanctuary preserved
Today, visitors who make the journey to the end of Gunbarrel Road find nearly five miles of trails, a swinging bridge over South Chickamauga Creek, forests, wetlands, meadows and hilltops. The creek cuts through the property for a mile, creating opportunities for paddling, floating and swimming during warmer months.
It sits in sharp contrast to the commercial landscape just minutes away.
“It’s a sanctuary,” Whitehorn says. “A living history area.”
Layers of history
History is woven through nearly every corner of the property.
Near the visitor center stands Spring Frog Cabin, a weathered log structure visible through the trees. Its exact age remains a mystery. Evidence suggests it might date to the late 1700s or early 1800s, and portions of its construction are believed to reflect Native building techniques.
The cabin later became home to the Walker family, and Robert Sparks Walker was born there. He, his wife and one of their children are buried on the grounds.
The cabin once stood closer to the railroad tracks that slice through the property. Passing trains shook it so violently that constant repairs became necessary.
The cabin was eventually moved farther from the tracks after repeated vibrations from passing trains left it needing yearly repairs.
“When the railroad was built, it was really close to the cabin’s front door,” Whitehorn says.
Elsewhere on the property, the landscape tells an even older story.
A meadow known as Little Owl Village marks the site of a Native settlement occupied centuries before Chattanooga existed. Archaeological excavations conducted during the 1980s and 1990s uncovered evidence linking the site to a Mississippian-era village that likely encountered members of the Tristan de Luna expedition, one of the earliest Spanish explorations of the Southeast.
Visitors walking through the field today see little evidence of that history above ground. Inside the visitor center, however, exhibits and reconstructions help explain the significance of what archaeologists found.
More than a preserve
Audubon Acres’ mission extends beyond this property.
The Chattanooga Audubon Society protects more than 500 acres across four sites in Hamilton County, including McClellan Island in the Tennessee River, David Gray Nature Sanctuary near Sale Creek and a small wetland preserve nearby.
For Whitehorn, stewardship means protecting landscapes from the pressures that have transformed so much of the county.
“Protecting these acres means making sure they stay undeveloped,” she says.
Yet Audubon Acres is more than a preserve. It’s also an outdoor classroom.
As education director, Whitehorn oversees field trips, summer camps, living-history demonstrations and public programs.
On any given visit, guests might encounter a blacksmith, wood-carver, rope maker or other historical interpreter. The organization’s annual Pioneer Days event invites children to churn butter, press apple cider and make cornhusk dolls.
The sanctuary’s monthly Little Owl Lecture Series explores both natural and cultural history, often taking visitors directly to the archaeological site while experts discuss the people who once lived there.
Many visitors, however, come simply to hike the trails. Members with gate-code access may enter from sunrise to sunset, even when the sanctuary is closed to the public.
Whitehorn says the most common reaction from first-time visitors is surprise.
“It’s a hidden gem in Chattanooga,” she says. “We’ve been here since 1944, but a lot of people either don’t know about us or only remember coming here on a field trip years ago.”
Occasionally, visitors arrive carrying memories that stretch back decades.
“Someone the other day said, ‘I walked around here with Robert Sparks Walker when he was alive,’” Whitehorn recalls.
Those encounters serve as reminders of Audubon Acres’ unusual place in Chattanooga – a landscape where natural history, human history and living memory still overlap.
As traffic streams along Gunbarrel Road and new stores and neighborhoods continue to spread across the surrounding landscape, Audubon Acres remains a rare pocket of permanence.
Visitors can still walk through woods, cross the creek, stand beside a centuries-old cabin and follow trails through land that one man fought to preserve before Chattanooga’s growth reached its doorstep.
More than 80 years after Walker decided the property was worth saving, Audubon Acres remains what he intended: a sanctuary.