The Tennessee Discovery Trails are a multi-year program to encourage citizens to walk in downtown Clarksville through a set of trails combining small works of art representing Tennessee icons created by local artists with stories of past events that occurred on the streets of Clarksville.
Phase I of this program created artwork representing the Tennessee state bird, the mocking bird, and the development of three downtown Tennessee Discovery Trails. Dr. Jim Diehr created two poses of the state bird. The local Clarksville Foundry then cast 50 life-sized birds from these sculptures. The statues will be placed in natural habitat poses along three downtown sidewalk trails for walkers to discover. A .75-mile trail offers an easy, flat walk around the city center, an approximately 3-mile walk goes from downtown along a main mixed residential and business corridor, and an approximately 5-mile tract stretches between the historic Dog Hill neighborhood to Riverview Cemetery.
In future years, plans are to add more artwork of state symbols such as irises, box turtles, raccoons, tulip poplars, zebra swallowtail butterflies, or channel catfish to mark Clarksville as a quintessential Tennessee city. The trails are a joint project of the Tennessee State Hall of Fame, Clarksville-Montgomery County Arts and Heritage Development Council, Women’s Network, Tennessee Arts Commission, Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, and Montgomery County and City of Clarksville.