FAIRHOPE, Ala. - Most cities have at least one public park, but few have as many as Fairhope does, and fewer still have their own beaches set against the dramatic background of the highest bluffs along the eastern seaboard.

But until a new brochure was published recently about Fairhope’s parks, none of the parks had ever been described in one publicly available document showing their locations, including historical and other information about them.

“The idea for the brochure started when Garland Sims showed us some 400 pictures of Fairhope’s parks he had taken,” according to Fairhope Environmental Advisory Board chairman Jim Horner. Sims, an FEAB member and longtime volunteer and environmental advocate, well known for having helped establish the dozens of purple martin birdhouses that line Fairhope’s waterfront.

Horner said the following FEAB members and other residents provided assistance in creating the brochure:

• Elaine Snyder-Conn, FEAB member, and Anna Keene, of Alabama Coastal Foundation, created the parks descriptions, inventories and general layout;

• Donnie Barrett, director of the local history museum, and Dean Mosher, local artist and former vice president of Fairhope Single Tax Corp., gave historical advice;

• Kim Burmeister, of the city of Fairhope, did all of the formatting first as a six-panel three-fold brochure. “Because it looked very crowded, she went the extra mile to format it into an eight-panel four-fold configuration,” Horner said;

• The FSTC funded the first printing of the brochure; and

• David Powell, of the city of Fairhope, put the map together using computer graphics and GPS programs.

The brochures, produced as a joint project of the FEAB, city of Fairhope’s planning and building department, and the FTSC, are now available at several downtown locations including city hall, public works building, Welcome Center, FSTC, James P. Nix Center and the Fairhope Museum of History.

“The brochure has been a long time in the making, and we are very proud of it and hope it will be useful to the public,” Horner said.