The Buckeye Trail

• LOCATION • TRAIL MAP • GALLERY • EVENTS

The Trail and Neighborhood

In his journey through Texas in 1856, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted admired the “luxuriant confusion” of the interlaced branches and vines from the immense trees of the Trinity River bottomlands. It has been left to us, the neighbors, hikers, politicians, conservationists, and advocates, to reconcile the complexity and conflict embedded in this ecosystem.

A group of aspiring Master Naturalists undertook this challenge through an assigned project to increase the engagement of the South Dallas Ideal+Bonton neighborhood with the adjoining Ned and Genie Fritz Buckeye Trail.

We didn’t embark on this assignment alone. We stood on the shoulders of those who blazed the trails of bottomland forest preservation and neighborhood revival. Like any good naturalist, we share our historical and botanical insights into this “luxuriant confusion'” and the Indigenous peoples who first occupied it. But best of all, we share the insights, in their own powerful voices, from generations of Ideal residents from whom we learned the most important lessons: the power of community and the simple everyday pleasures of nature around us.

An Invitation

After grappling with the urban ecosystem of Bexar Street and the Buckeye Trail, we invite you to immerse yourself in nature’s simple pleasures; listen to the “cheer, cheer, cheer” of the cardinals and the chorus of other trills, twitters, chirps, and hoots as you bathe in the forest; be present, breathe deeply, with heart open; heal your relationship with the earth; advocate for environmental justice; heed the wisdom of weathered naturalists; acknowledge the Indigenous peoples who lived in our region; celebrate community; and savor the memories of our elders.