Official Bike Trails in Memphis
Memphis, TN has several areas which bikers love because of the scenery and the biker-friendly terrain. There are a few basic areas in the city which riders can concentrate on, depending on their riding habits and their locale preferences.
http://www.midsouthtrails.com
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http://www.cityofmemphis.org /
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The city of Memphis has worked hard to “build” bike routes for both the commuter and recreational biker. These routes encompass over 60 miles of city streets for bike tours. They link neighborhoods and enable those who wish to stick close to where they live and work a great way to enjoy biking with others nearby. All are within the city proper. All offer pleasant and well-marked routes with established distances for those who might want to hop on their bike for the weekend or after a day’s work, just to unwind and enjoy many of the city’s attractions at a leisurely pace.
The routes are as follows, with the distances included:
? Downtown, 9 miles
? Raleigh-Frayser, 17 miles
? North Memphis, 14 miles
? Central Memphis, 19 miles
? East Memphis, 16 miles
Each trail has a different feel. The downtown tour is distinctly urban and offers passage past the great landmarks of the Memphis Music era as well as a stunning ride down Riverside Drive and the Mighty Mississippi to Midtown and the old, stately homes under canopies of oaks and elms hundreds of years old Raleigh-Frayser also skirts some beautiful treed and wooded areas, as does the East Memphis route. This route winds east along Lake Windemere and the lovely soft, rolling hills of old Raleigh. The East Memphis route provides a route adjacent to the parks of east Memphis, golf courses, the Botanic Garden and other cultural highpoints.
Midtown, or Central Memphis, gives the rider a sense of the diversity and history of Memphis over time as it spread out east from the Mississippi bluff. Beginning at the home-a true “castle”-of Clarence Saunders, the founder of Piggly Wiggly Food Stores (the very first supermarket in the U.S.), this route takes you through some of the most lovely and expensive properties in Memphis. Most of them date from the late 1020 through the 1930s and are representative of a time of prosperity and the consolidation of some of the city’s older family fortunes. The lake of Chickasaw Gardens is often a stop near the beginning of this route. There, bikers can refresh themselves while they watch the ducks flapping over the water and intermingle with local residents walking their dogs. At the southwestern part of the route is Overton Park, modeled after Central Park in New York City, and one of the few “old forrest” urban parks in the country. Boasting elegant oaks, elms, hickories, wild Cherries and Tulip Poplars that were here before this city was even settled and cleared, this is a true “Virgin Forest,” written about in southern fiction for decades.
In the 60s Overton Park was almost split in a push by expressway advocates who wanted to locate the expressway through the center of the park almost all the way to the river – all this in an effort to save commuters a few minutes in their commute to downtown, which was even then losing businesses to developing business areas further east.
Activists who refused to see this virgin forest bisected and the historic trolley line and the city’s lovely zoo damaged permanently prevented this travesty. The route also takes bikers past two universities and two museums.
These are all urban routes and as such are shared space with cars. All bikers should take extra precautions to ride as far to the right as humanly possible to avoid holding up or interfering with commuting auto traffic. And of course, every biker is strongly advised to wear helmets.
Each route has designated starting points and markers at every mile to give a sense of how far remains until the finish of the route. Parking and restrooms are available for any stops.
The Perimeter route is 49 miles long and it follows the outer boundaries of all the other 5 routes. It is more rural and much more appealing to those who want to ride fast and hard around the city.
The city of Memphis bike routes are much more than just paths for bikers. They each circumscribe parts of the city along historical lines. Beginning with the downtown route, one can get a sense of the city in the 1800s, when its economy was built on Cotton. The warehouses of old Front Street and downtown area with its old cobblestones still exposed in some places, the newly renovated train station and the entire riverside area was the locale of the first buildings and businesses of Memphis.
Going North, the Raleigh area takes riders to the outskirts of the original city where natural springs and cool breezes lured people to build homes to retreat to in the heat of the summer.
The Midtown ride unveils the establishment of Overton Park and the reign of Boss Crump, Memphis’s most powerful mayor and legend of Blues songs during the 20’s and 30s. It also showcases the mansions along the Parkways, which were constructed when Memphis was the Hardwood Capitol of the World and fortunes were built on the export of fine timber and the ship lines that transported it to the Port of New Orleans and north to mills.
The East Memphis tour takes riders further from the river when the city was expanding residential areas and building more and more neighborhoods for people wishing to escape from the Urban center of town. It was the 50s and a time for Urban Renewal all over the country. These neighborhoods were lovely, and some of the finest homes in the city are located out near the outer edge of this bike route. But sadly, Urban Renewal claimed many of the incredible turn of the century warehouses and older buildings downtown and permitted zoning laxity which allowed investors to build cheap apartment buildings in Victorian neighborhoods near the downtown area. Fortunately, this egregious disregard for historical and architectural value was put to a halt before a major portion of the city’s antiquities was destroyed.
In reality, a trip around each of these bike paths is a trip through the history of not only the south itself but of a good portion of the entire country. It is a lesson in the perseverance and doggedness of a city as it grew and learned to value itself and its history in all its many growing pains.
Memphis is truly a spectacularly beautiful place with huge, majestic trees that are breathtaking in that they canopy and frame an urban area, enriching it with beauty, shade and sheer loveliness. Its high bluffs over one of the widest expanses of the Mississippi River provide a scenic grandeur free of charge to the entire population. The location of the city is another natural wonder that has made it the transportation hub of America, with Fed Ex and trucking and rail lines radiating from it to the outer coasts of the country. Riding the bike trails gives anyone a way to personally experience the history and infrastructure of an important and beautiful city in a way that is refreshing
