Chattanooga Civitan Club Vice President Gail Walldorf, left, and Lookout Mountain Conservancy President and CEO Robyn Carlton discuss donating meals for LMC’s Howard School paid internship program. Interns maintain LMC’s trails and bouldering parks, among many other things. Ms. Carlton was the speaker at Civitan’s Aug. 18 meeting.



photo by Hannah Campbell

Since 2012 Lookout Mountain Conservancy has run a paid internship program for Howard School students. And LMC will commit to the teachers, too. Robyn Carlton, president and CEO, said in about three years LMC will offer 24 affordable homes to Howard School teachers, tapping some of the 60-acre Wauhatchie property that houses LMC’s bouldering parks and hiking and biking trails.

“They have to carpool way outside the city,” Ms. Carlton said in a speech to the Civitan Club, drawing out “way” for a couple of seconds. “I told y’all that we’re not your typical land trust.”

This small neighborhood for Howard teachers would bring back what was, Ms. Carlton said. St. Elmo, Chattanooga’s “first neighborhood,” was split decades ago when Chattanooga Medicine Company, later Chattem and Sanofi, was built on St. Elmo Avenue.

Also, LMC has plans to add a second 25-student cohort and build a bigger clubhouse. 

Ms. Carlton said LMC’s commitment to these students sets it apart from other land trusts that don’t connect with the people who live around the land.

“We’ve blown a lot of land trusts out of the water,” she said.

In addition, LMC will open Sims Garden neighborhood park in Lookout Mountain, Ga., in Spring 2024. The seven-acre public park near Fairyland Pharmacy is marked by waves of low stone walls where Jesse Sims’s dahlia garden will be regenerated.

“We’re actually bringing back what was,” said Ms. Carlton. The new park will have a pavilion and trails through a bamboo forest to a natural playground.

From the late 1940s the Sims family operated Fairyland Courts, a motel with vacation cottages, a swimming pool, pavilion with stone fireplace and grill and two “beautiful” shuffleboard courts that, without restoration, will serve a new generation, Ms. Carlton said.

Mr. Sims was president of the Southeast Dahlia Growers Association and his gardens were featured in Southern Living Magazine.

The U.S. government stowed its star witness, Edward Partin, at Fairyland Courts during the 1964 Jimmy Hoffa trial. Ms. Carlton said there are photos of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy throwing a football on the lawns with FBI agents lurking nearby.

Ms. Carlton said the Howard program shocked and awed the land trust community at a national conference presentation in 2016.

“I just say my box is bigger, and yours can be bigger, too,” Ms. Carlton said. “Li’l bitty Chattanooga… Who knew?”

At the start of the program Ms. Carlton said she found more kids in the hallways than in class.

But high school graduation is Ms. Carlton’s first priority for the interns. They wear a pearl and maroon LMC stole with their gowns.

“We guarantee they will walk across that stage,” she said. High school graduation means chances of going to jail are much lower, she said, “and they know that.”

“All of our kids have dreams and hopes,” she said.

The Howard program interns are paid to maintain the trails and bouldering gardens in LMC’s 110 acres at the base of Lookout Mountain and in St. Elmo. They work every weekday in the summer and on Saturdays during the school year, and all meals are provided. There’s also beekeeping, a garden, a greenhouse, and community refrigerators for extra produce at Calvin Donaldson Elementary School, where they also maintain outdoor classrooms.

“They worked and they connected to this land,” Ms. Carlton said. She said the LMC land is the safest place in their lives. “That’s where they come to be safe,” she said.

Ms. Carlton said that last year the group hauled 900 tires from the Wauhatchie property. The interns delivered the load to the Hamilton County Jail and Detention Center to be shipped to a recycling plant.

“They get to see the other side,” she said.

Program graduates who go to college are guaranteed a job on the property any time they are home during breaks.

“We always find money to hire everybody,” she said.

High school applicants submit an essay and teacher recommendations. They complete volunteer hours to meet each other, and then the current interns interview the prospects and make the final decisions.

“They become very protective of the program,” Ms. Carlton said.

The program has eight seniors this year. Students and their parents attend classes in adverse childhood experiences and, better yet, classes in how to treat those wounds.

CONSERVANCY BEGINNINGS

LMC owns 183 acres along the length of Lookout Mountain: Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. It also manages conservation easements. LMC is number 233 of 1,700 accredited land trusts in the United States. Land protected by a land trust has permanent limits on development, no matter who owns the land.

LMC was founded in 1991 when Elizabeth Lupton Davenport bought a closed water slide attraction at the base of the mountain destined to become a car parts lot.

“She said, ‘Not on my mountain,’” Ms. Carlton said. “And then went home and told Rody what she had done.”

The property has grown to 60 acres at the base of Lookout Mountain, plus 50 acres in St. Elmo, connected by Guild Trail.

LMC has three staff members and about 100 regular donors. Its annual budget is $375,000.