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July 10, 1978 |
Left to right Thomas Carpenter, President, UNF Ray Lewis, President, Sawmill Slough Conservation Club John Brown, Chief of Heritage, Conservation and Recreation, U.S. Department of Interior Ray Bowman, Faculty Advisor, Sawmill Slough Conservation Club |
UNF NATURE TRAILS
Personnel in Physical Facilities, especially Hilton Meadows, the founding Director, and later Larry Davis, envisioned nature trails on campus very early in the university's history. C. Ward Hancock, founding Director of Administrative Services, chaired a Nature Trail Committee through which students, faculty, and administrative personnel worked together for the common good of the trails. Dr. Robert Loftin, founder of Sawmill Slough, led the Slough in blazing the paths and former logging/hunting roads maintained by Physical Facilities as trails. Bob also taught club members to be trail guides.*
When Ray Bowman served as faculty advisor to UNF's Sawmill Slough Conservation Club from 1975 to 1979, he lead a team that transformed the nature trails from blazed paths and roads into a unified system with a common trail head. The overall goal of the project was to make the trails more educational and to make them self-guiding. With funds contributed by the Student Government Association, Dr. Bowman purchased cypress boards and posts and spent the Spring Break of 1976 making the first trail markers and a wooden map of the trails. Physical Facilities moved a gazebo they had constructed previously and installed the wooden map under it. Bob Loftin drafted trail guides describing outstanding features along each trail and the UNF Police kept the gazebo stocked with color coded guide copies.
Sawmill Slough members spent several
Saturdays installing the trail markers and continued to provide guided tours
to school children on field trips and to the general public on special occasions.
Throughout, the UNF Department of Physical Facilities played a crucial role
by maintaining the trails and by actively supporting the efforts of students
and faculty to convert the nature trails into an educational opportunity for
the Jacksonville community. In response to an application by Ward Hancock's
office, the U.S. Department of Interior recognized the transformed trails as
a National Recreational Trail on May 26, 1978 followed by a ceremony on campus
July 10.
*Bob Loftin was a magnificent leader of students. His untimely death in 1993 deprived the university, and indeed the world, of an extraordinary human being. In a fitting tribute to his contributions, the UNF Nature Trails were dedicated to him on August 31, 1993.
