For more than a century, metro Atlanta hid the Chattahoochee River behind subdivisions, behind golf courses, behind railroad tracks, behind warehouses. Behind, behind, behind.

Now Atlanta is rediscovering its river, and changing the story it tells about itself.

In this episode, we follow forty paddlers, one writer and a podcast producer on a three-night, 48-mile Camp + Paddle trip down the Chattahoochee. Along the way, we find out how a river once called “dead” was revived, and how the Chattahoochee RiverLands, a 100-mile project creating parks, trails and river access across 20 cities and seven counties, is changing the way a whole region thinks about community, access and a 485-mile river that has been hiding in plain sight.

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What do a 17th-century cow pasture, fourteen timber cabins in Rocky Mountain National Park, a limestone elementary school in Kansas, and a brand-new community schoolyard in Boston have in common? They’re all part of the same story — America’s evolving idea of what deserves protecting, and why.

As America marks its 250th year, host Ronda Lee Chapman traces that idea through four eras: Origin, at Boston Common, the nation’s oldest public park; Evolution, at Rocky Mountain National Park, where a 42-acre inholding reveals how unfinished “America’s best idea” remains; Disruption, at the Monroe School in Topeka — a building at the center of Brown v. Board of Education, saved from the wrecking ball; and Revolution, at Boston’s Chittick Elementary, where the students themselves designed the newest kind of public space.

Take action: ​Tell Congress to protect the parks, public lands, and historic sites that preserve our full American story → tpl.org/public-policy#take-action

Featured in this episode

• Brown Revisited, a project of Oyez — brown.oyez.org — The audio of the Brown v. Board
• The Freedom Trail Foundation — thefreedomtrail.org
• Friends of the Public Garden — friendsofthepublicgarden.org
• Boston Parks and Recreation — boston.gov/departments/parks-and-recreation
• Rocky Mountain National Park — nps.gov/romo
• Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park — nps.gov/brvb
• TPL’s Community Schoolyards® program — tpl.org/community-schoolyards
• Find a park within a 10-minute walk of home — tpl.org

People. Nature. Big Ideas. is a production of Trust for Public Land in partnership with PGP Productions. Executive producer: Thomas Clayton Miller. Editorial director: Deborah Williams.

Trust for Public Land
Connecting everyone to the outdoors™
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This month's episode flips the script. PNBI host Ronda Lee takes the hot seat as guest Gabaccia Moreno throws the tough questions.

Ronda and Gabaccia met as strangers on a shuttle to Big Sky, Montana, where both were completing their PSIA/AASI instruction certifications through Women of Winter, a program centering women of color in snow sports. Together, they unpack Ronda's decade in the mountains of Utah, the complicated joy of reclaiming spaces that haven’t always felt welcoming to them, the very real cost of access, and the particular power of age diversity on the slopes.

Trust for Public Land
Connecting everyone to the outdoors™
tpl.org | Instagram | Facebook
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