The Silver Comet Trail repurposed a former rail line into a popular multi-purpose path. The route dates to the 1890s when a rail line connecting Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala. Seaboard Air Line Railroad operated the line and its successor, CSX, abandoned it in 1987. The trail is named for the Silver Comet passenger train, which ran from May 18, 1947, until 1969. The trail starts in Smyrna, Ga., and passes through Paulding and Polk counties and connects with the Chief Ladiga Trail at the Georgia-Alabama border.
Taylor-Brawner Park in Smyrna, Georgia, combines public green space, including a playground, gazebo, walking trails, a pavilion and open green space, with two of the city’s most important historic buildings. Brawner Hall and the Taylor-Brawner House, two structures that help connect the property to Smyrna’s earlier history.
The roughly 11-acre property was once part of the Brawner Hospital campus, which the city of Smyrna acquired in 2001 with plans to rehabilitate the historic hospital building for office and meeting space while turning the surrounding grounds into a passive park. Funded through a voter-approved $24 million parks bond referendum, work on the site began in 2007 and was completed in April 2009.
The Taylor-Brawner House, a Folk Victorian home dating to about 1890, was preserved after local citizens organized a fundraising effort and created the Taylor-Brawner House Foundation. The house now serves as a small events venue, while the broader park remains one of Smyrna’s best-known civic and historic spaces.
30080
The High Line opened in 2009. The now-popular park was built atop a former elevated New York Central Railroad spur known as the West Side Line. The High Line today features nearly 1.5 miles of elevated trails and provides roughly 5 million people annually a unique view of New York City. The path runs Gansevoort Street, located three blocks south of 14th Street in the Meatpacking District, through Chelsea to the northern edge of the West Side Yard on 34th Street near the Javits Convention Center.
World’s Fair Park in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, opened in 1982 on a former railroad yard site. The park was the site of the 1982 World’s Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE), which opened on May 1, 1982, and closed on October 31, 1982, and welcomed more than 11 million visitors. The Sunsphere and the Tennessee Amphitheater, the two remaining structures from the exposition, are located in the park.
37902