More improvements may be coming to the Graham Creek Nature Preserve if Leslie Lassiter, environmental manager for Foley receives a grant she is applying for.

Graham Creek Nature Preserve is owned and operated by the City of Foley.

“The mayor and council were all for making the property a park,” Lassiter said. “It is really nice to have a council that is supportive of something. This eco-tourism push is great and to have this much land — it is unheard of for a city to have this much land.”

As part of the city’s eco-tourism push to connect green ways and blue ways, Lassiter said she has hopes at some point to connect the trails in the preserve to other existing paths including the Glen Lakes Bike Path.

“We want to be able to connect back to the city, having the access to connect this remote area back to the city,” she said.

This project has received the grant Lassiter is applying for three times before.

“We are hoping to be able to get it again,” she said.

The first three grants helped offset the cost of designing the preserve, building the canoe launch and building a pavilion near the canoe launch, as well as creating trails.

According to Lassiter, the trails are the part of the preserve which need the most work right now.

“The big thing is right now we are doing the trails. Hopefully with these trails we will really have the whole park opened up to the public. Right now there is a canoe launch and there is a pretty good size pavilion we finished a few months ago with a few picnic tables scattered throughout the area. Right now people are really just canoeing and picnicking. We are starting to get more people actually out there on the trails. Most of the trails are already in existence. The biggest thing is marking them and getting them mapped,” Lassiter said.

Lassiter also has other plans for the grant money, if the city receives it.

“The grant will help us mark the trails. Some of the trails will be crossing small streams, so I want little footbridges built over them. Also, we need some more signage. I also want habitat kiosks with the signs that will identify the habitat, and tell what kind of plants can be found there and other facts. We will do most of that in house as far as the picture taking and the texts. We will customize them for our site. Once we get the signs in we are going to color code them for walking and hiking,” Lassiter said.

She also hopes the grant will cover replacing a dilapidated culvert with an upgraded one which the school buses will be able to cross. 

Other plans for the preserve in the near future include adding additional geo-caching locations. The geo-caching location will be boxes scattered throughout the preserve groups can use their GPS devices to find when given just the coordinates.

“I found a box out there,” said Lassiter.  “We are hoping to put multiple sites out there so families can come out and find these things.”

She said she is also looking into adding sporting areas and a building if funds become available.

“We were looking into putting a disc golf field out there, but now we are looking at putting an archery field out there since archery has become such a big thing in the schools. There are so many possibilities, right now we are just trying to get all of these trails in. the next big goal is to have a building out there with an auditorium where the kids can go in, we can do a presentation and then take them out,” she said.

The walking trails currently encompass seven miles, according to Lassiter. The trails crisscross through pine savannahs, which Lassiter considers to be the highlight of the park.

“The trails are full of pitcher plants, a lot of insect eating plants and orchids. We also have wetlands and bottomland swamps so we get some really neat things out there. We get the brown pelicans so we have the birdwatchers come out. Right now it is still kind of staging. We do field trips out there regularly, especially in the spring and fall. We bring out high school and middle school students. We do an educational tour, which takes them into the different habitats, teaches them what a wetland is and how plants can survive there and what animals you would find there,” she said.

Lassiter recently started a web site for the preserve, www.grahamcreek.org, and the preserve is currently open from 6 a.m.-6 p.m.