O
ur city’s founders knew they’d landed the perfect spot to
settle. The river crossed a fall line, and at the intersection, the
water level dropped dramatically, leaving it navigable on one side and with swirling rapids on the other. Boats from the Gulf of Mexico could make it this far upstream, drop off their cotton and cargo for the mills, and the mills would use the raging water for power. What those early settlers never saw com-
ing—what hardly anyone ever saw com- ing—was a time when those very conditions would lead to the creation of a 2.5-mile, world-class, urban whitewater course. But that time is nearly here. John
Turner, the W.C. Bradley executive that has championed the project for the past 14 years, said, “It was a crazy idea, but it was never my idea.” He credits Joe Smith, who dreamed of capitalizing on the river’s two key features—drop and flow—while work- ing at Wickham’s Outdoor World back in the ‘70s. Smith compiled all his research and turned it over to Turner. Turner drafted a team and got to work.
There were predictable complaints from those who lacked vision, but Turner says
the naysayers were few. “I think that’s because there was a little bit of something for everyone in what we were trying to accomplish,” he said. What they were trying to accomplish
was less about whitewater rafting than it was about restoring the river to its natural state, back to what it was before the dams were built. “To tell you the truth, if all we were
doing was tricking up the river for kayak- ers, it would have been hard to get your heart into it,” Turner said. “I guess the sexy part is the whitewater recreation. But if you look at all the people behind this project, we wouldn’t know what to do with a kayak. Put us in one and we’d drown. Whitewater was not the point of this.” The point was to let the river flow like it
did hundreds of years ago, when the area was a prime fishing spot for Native Ameri- cans. After the dams were built, the fish could no longer swim upriver to spawn. Te restoration will allow threatened fish and plant life to return. That benefit brought the environmental community on board. Of course the recreationalists got behind it, too. A river chopped up by dams is no
good for boaters. Breaching the dams would give fishermen, boaters and athletes a better place to play. And although some people opposed
removing the old dams, local historic preservationists supported the project. “They realized we have all these indus- trial buildings along the river that would never be grist mills or textile plants again,” Turner explained. “For these buildings to be repurposed, we needed to activate the river. The Riverwalk had gone so far, now what we needed was a riverfront.” Turner says that’s why the money fol-
lowed the project. City leaders see it as a catalyst for riverfront development. “Just go down the list: the CSU downtown cam- pus, the Eagle and Phenix lofts and the hotel planned for Phenix City, and Troy University plans to move their campus to the river. Riverfront development is already happening.”
Now the hard part Getting support for the project was easy,
building it was not. Every day of nearly two years of construction was a challenge. “This river has been hard for man to attempt to tame since the beginning,”
8
Columbus and the Valley
JUNE 2013
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