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By Cherith Glover Fluker | For the Birmingham Times
For most of their history, Red Mountain Park, Ruffner Mountain, and Turkey Creek Nature Preserve were three different places with three different stories. Ruffner came first, staking its claim on the mountain in 1977. Turkey Creek followed in 2009, protecting one of the state’s most biodiverse creek systems. Red Mountain Park, in 2012, reclaimed land once carved up by the region’s iron-ore mining industry.
In 2024, that changed.
That year, the three properties merged into a single organization, Jefferson County Greenways, built around a shared mission: to protect more than 3,400 acres of natural habitat, connect the county’s largest greenspaces, and treat conservation as an infrastructure that Jefferson County cannot do without.
Three separate organizations had meant three boards setting three sets of priorities, three staffs solving the same problems independently, and three brands competing for the same limited pool of donors and volunteers.
A trail crew repairing erosion damage at Red Mountain Park and another doing the same work at Turkey Creek had no formal reason to compare notes. A donor who cared broadly about conservation had to choose which of three organizations to support, rather than backing a single countywide effort.
Darryl Washington, the organization’s inaugural CEO, is leading that effort, but he is quick to say the story is not his alone. It belongs just as much to the hikers, schoolchildren, naturalists, and gardeners who show up at these three preserves every week.
Since his appointment in 2025, however, Washington has been the one translating that shared mission into a working organization. His own relationship with the outdoors, however, goes back decades, long before there was a Jefferson County Greenways to lead.
Darryl Washington, Jefferson County Greenways inaugural CEO, is leading the effort to maintain Red Mountain Park, Ruffner Mountain, and Turkey Creek. (Provided)A Personal Connection to Nature
Washington’s relationship with the outdoors started on a bus to summer camp when he was a young boy.
Growing up in Birmingham’s Norwood neighborhood, Washington often spent time outside with friends. But at age 10, a summer camp experience through the A.G. Gaston Boys Club introduced him to a world beyond his neighborhood. At Camp Cosby, he paddled a canoe, mounted a horse and slept in a cabin for the first time.
He also spent extended time with boys from different ethnic backgrounds, sharing meals, cabins, and group activities. For a 10-year-old who had mostly known his own neighborhood, the experience opened his eyes to people and experiences beyond what was familiar.
“That experience truly changed my life,” Washington said.
The camp also introduced him to Native American culture and history, with cabins and groups named after Native Alabama tribes. But perhaps the more lasting lesson was what Washington learned from the boys around him.
“More than anything, we all learned we have so much more in common than our racial and ethnic differences,” Washington said.
Decades passed before nature called him back.
As an adult, Washington rediscovered Ruffner Mountain and was drawn in by its hiking trails and old mining relics. Irondale Mayor James Stewart Jr. suggested he join Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve’s board of directors. He did, and he was eventually elected to two terms as board chairman, long before anyone talked about merging Jefferson County’s parks into a single organization.
That volunteer chapter led to something else, too: a hiking group Washington still counts among his proudest accomplishments, not because of any title attached to it, but because of what it became. More than a decade ago, two former Ramsay High School basketball teammates, Nathaniel Rutledge and Chris Lewis, reached out to Washington after the sudden death of their friend and classmate, Cedric “Froot” Cole.
Washington, Rutledge, and Lewis founded Birmingham Mountain High Hikers that August, a Saturday-morning group that has since grown to more than 1,500 participants.
Every Saturday morning, under the motto “Hiking for our Health,” the group still gathers at Ruffner Mountain for two- to three-mile hikes. Its full story, and what it says about the culture Washington is now building across all of Jefferson County Greenways, is one the Birmingham Times will tell separately.
By the time Washington became Jefferson County Greenways’ first CEO, his path told its own story: a Boys Club camper who grew into a preserve board chairman, then the leader of a countywide conservation network.
Turkey Creek Nature Preserve is a 1,048-acre natural sanctuary located at 3906 Turkey Creek Road, about 15 minutes north of Birmingham. (Provided)The Everyday Rhythm of the Trails
Washington’s personal experiences help explain how he sees Jefferson County Greenways. To him, these preserves are more than properties to be managed; they are places where people from every background, ZIP code, and income level can find common ground, much like he did as a boy at Camp Cosby.
That idea plays out in the everyday rhythm of the trails.
On any given week, Jefferson County’s three largest greenspaces are already at work before most residents even realize it. Hiking and running groups gather on the trails. School buses pull up so students can spend a field trip exploring the mountains and creek. Families and first-time visitors attend public programs led by Jefferson County Greenways naturalists, learning about the birds, bats, snakes, and pollinators that call these preserves home. Twice a year, gardeners line up for the native plant sale, choosing species meant to support the local ecosystem.
These activities reach beyond recreation to health and community. A hiking group can become a support network. A native plant sale gives a longtime gardener a chance to teach someone picking up a trowel for the first time. For some students, a field trip may be their first opportunity to explore nature with a naturalist or educator. Together, those experiences connect recreation with health and community while making the outdoors accessible.
Organization leaders know these efforts only work if greenspace is accessible to people across the county, not just those who live closest to a trailhead. Access to parks and natural areas has long been shaped by the same factors that influence access to other resources: where people live, their income, and whether they have reliable transportation.
Part of the merger’s purpose is to make sure the benefits of 3,400 acres of connected greenspace reach residents throughout Jefferson County, not just those who live near its largest preserves.
That commitment goes beyond the trail map. Field trips to all three preserves are free for students in Birmingham City Schools and Jefferson County Schools, along with the teachers and chaperones who accompany them, removing a cost that keeps many field trips out of reach of public school budgets elsewhere.
For students who cannot make it to a preserve at all, the organization’s naturalists carry the same wildlife education into the county, visiting schools, libraries, and community centers with live animals, biofacts, and lessons built around the birds, bats, snakes, and pollinators found on the trails. It is less a program than a standing offer: come to the mountain or let the mountain come to you.
It’s also, in a region that has not always agreed on much, a rare point of shared investment. Municipal leaders, commissioners, foundation donors, school administrators, and neighborhood volunteers do not all show up to the same meetings for the same reasons. But they have largely reached the same conclusion: Jefferson County’s mountains and creeks are worth more to everyone protected together than they ever were divided.
Three Legacies, One Network
These distinct legacies were once defined by their individual contributions: Red Mountain Park as a corridor of industrial heritage and outdoor activity; Ruffner Mountain as a center for conservation science and environmental learning; and Turkey Creek as a sanctuary for water quality and biological diversity. Those differences were never a reason to stay separate. Today they’re treated as complementary strengths inside one organization, each park doing what it does best while sharing a single strategic direction.
“We don’t need these places to be the same. We need them to work together,” Washington said. “Each one brings something different to the table, and that’s what makes the whole system stronger.”
Red Mountain Park spans more than 1,450 acres and 18 miles of trails built into the rust-colored remnants of the region’s mining history, a place where recreation and industrial memory sit side by side.
Ruffner Mountain, the elder of the three, protects roughly 1,030 acres and 11 miles of trails and has long served as a hub for conservation research into the region’s flora and fauna.
Turkey Creek Nature Preserve guards nearly 1,000 acres and 7 miles of trails around one of Alabama’s most biodiverse creek systems. The preserve has recently expanded by adding more than 300 acres through partnerships with the Alabama Forever Wild Land Trust and The Nature Conservancy of Alabama.
Combined, the three destinations now form a connected network that draws more than 265,000 visitors a year. From naturalists and marathoners to students and weekend gardeners, many find their way to these trails having never previously considered themselves outdoorsy. That perspective often changes when they find themselves standing at a quiet overlook or crouched low beside the water’s edge.
Building the Foundation
Washington did not come to conservation work the way most nonprofit executives do. He spent more than three decades in economic development, community revitalization and strategic partnerships, in executive roles with BellSouth, Urban Impact and the cities of Irondale and Montgomery.
It is an unusual résumé for a conservation CEO, but one that gave him more practice merging institutions and engaging skeptical stakeholders than most people who spend their careers in parks and preserves.
He has needed that practice.
During his first year as CEO, Washington has focused on turning three formerly independent properties into one functioning organization: realigning staff for greater efficiency, combining the Commission and Foundation Board into joint governance meetings, and strengthening relationships among staff, commissioners and foundation directors who, not long ago, answered to three separate boards instead of one.
None of that work draws a crowd. Joint governance meetings and realigned organization charts do not make headlines. But they are the scaffolding that must go up before a merger this size can function day to day, before a decision about trail maintenance at Turkey Creek or a grant application for Ruffner Mountain can move through one process instead of three.
Washington structures this daily effort around a framework known as the Four Pillars of Excellence: People, Partnerships, Programs and Places. Under People, the focus remains on cultivating a culture that values everyone from internal staff to the neighborhood volunteers who lead Saturday hikes and staff the visitor centers. Partnerships prioritize the regional collaboration that recently expanded Turkey Creek’s protection through alliances with state land trusts. Programs represent the public-facing mission, including the naturalist-led walks, school field trips, and plant sales that invite the community in. Finally, Places centers on stewarding the 3,400-plus acres already protected, ensuring these landscapes are enhanced for whoever follows.
“These pillars provide the framework for both immediate success and long-term sustainability,” Washington said.
In practice, the framework reads less like a slogan and more like an operating manual, a way of sorting the organization’s daily decisions, large and small, into categories everyone on staff is expected to understand.
In 2012, Red Mountain Park reclaimed land once carved up by the region’s iron-ore mining industry. (Provided)Nature as Infrastructure
Ask Washington to make the case for why any of this matters and he reaches for the same vocabulary a city engineer might use, the same vocabulary he spent three decades applying to struggling commercial corridors and city budgets. He uses words like “asset” and “infrastructure.”
What’s different now is the asset itself. It’s not a downtown block or an industrial park, but 3,400 acres of mountain and creek that were already there, waiting for someone to argue they mattered as much as anything else the county was building.
“These greenspaces are what make our county, our region, and our state unique,” he said. “They are economic development assets, community development assets, tourism assets, and quality-of-life assets.”
The word choice is deliberate. Call a preserve an amenity, and it becomes one of the first things cut when budgets tighten. Call it infrastructure, and it belongs in the same category as the roads and water lines a government is not supposed to stop funding.
“We invest in transportation. We invest in utilities. We invest in buildings and tourism facilities,” Washington said. “We must also invest in the places that improve our physical and mental health, attract talent, support tourism, and preserve our natural heritage.”
The argument is aimed as much at commissioners and developers as at hikers, in a county competing for talent and long-term residents. Under that logic, a trail is not a luxury to be funded once the essentials are covered. It is one of the essentials, alongside the pipes and pavement.
For an organization built out of three formerly independent properties, that argument does double duty. It makes the case for why Jefferson County Greenways deserves continued public and private investment, and why that investment should flow to one coordinated organization instead of three separate ones.
Looking Ahead
As Jefferson County Greenways enters its second year, Washington is already looking past the merger toward what comes next: expanding trail access, advancing East Side Park, a planned, universally accessible greenspace, and deepening the regional partnerships that let a merged organization accomplish more than any of its three legacy parks could alone. Specific plans and a timeline for East Side Park have not yet been announced, but the project’s name signals its intent: a greenspace designed to be reachable by residents who may not live within easy reach of one of the county’s three flagship preserves.
“Our responsibility is not simply to preserve these places,” Washington said. “It’s to ensure future generations inherit something better than what we inherited.”
That responsibility traces back, in some sense, to a 10-year-old on a bus to Camp Cosby, discovering for the first time that nature did not care where he was from. It now extends to every hiker on Red Mountain Park, every student stepping off a school bus at Ruffner Mountain, and every family crouched beside Turkey Creek looking for salamanders.
“Nature has given so much to me,” Washington said. “Now, I have the privilege of helping ensure that everyone, regardless of ZIP code, race, age or income, can experience those same benefits.”
Whether that bet pays off will likely be measured the way the merger itself began, not in a single announcement, but in whether the next generation of Jefferson County residents grows up thinking of Red Mountain Park, Ruffner Mountain and Turkey Creek as one shared inheritance, rather than three separate destinations that happen to sit in the same county.
Three parks with one mission and a county betting that its mountains and its creeks are worth protecting together, the same way it protects everything else it cannot afford to lose.
Learn more about Jefferson County Greenways at jeffcogreenways.org.
