Land conservation high on retired doctor’s list

Lifelong love of outdoors spurs Moore’s preservation efforts

Dr. Chris Moore has been involved in outdoor activities all of his life, and his love for wild places and desire to preserve them is a torch he hopes to carry for a long time and pass down to future generations.

A native of Chattanooga, Tenn., Moore is essentially retired from medicine and has much of his attention turned toward an innovative land development in Walker County.

Moore, 56, is the principal developer in the Odyssey Co., which he formed to develop upscale residential communities according to land conservation ethics.

Odyssey purchased 400 acres on Lookout Mountain near the top of Nickajack Road, part of the estate of prominent Walker County attorney Frank M. Gleason.

"We’re creating a place that preserves the environmental health of the land, which in turn promotes the human health of the residents," he said.

The property is named Long Branch Residential Preserve after the creek that runs through it, and has 100 acres reserved for just 20 residences. That leaves 300 acres — 75 percent of the whole — in a permanent conservation easement.

The homesites range from two to six acres in size and from $250,000 to $400,000 in price. Moore acknowledges that at first glance that seems high, "but it’s a good investment when you consider that the purchase is part of forever protecting the wilderness around your property — relatively speaking, you’re buying into onetwentieth of 400 acres."

Long Branch is adjacent to the Lula Lake Land Trust, which preserves more than 4,400 acres on Lookout Mountain.

The area contains miles of old logging and mining roads, some of which are being rehabilitated into a network of hiking, biking and equestrian trails.

The Cloudland Connector Trail, which when complete will link Lula Lake with Cloudland Canyon State Park, runs along the edge of Long Branch preserve, adding an exceptional amenity for residents there.

The preserve is in a small valley on the eastern edge of Lookout Mountain flanked by steep ridges on each side.

The wooded residential land surrounds a 30-acre wildlife opening and pasture, and Odyssey has developed extensive equestrian facilities, including a barn and a competition/practice ring.

"Part of the land conservation aspect of Long Branch is building homes with architectural designs and materials that complement the surroundings," he said.

A review board has been incorporated into Long Branch’s residential association to advise and approve home construction.

The trail there

In his youth, Moore spent several summers at a wilderness camp in North Carolina, where his love of the outdoors blossomed. He worked there through college and afterward, eventually becoming the camp’s director.

Back in Chattanooga in those same years, he started the outdoor education program at his high school alma mater, Baylor. Known as Walkabout, the program utilizes outdoor recreation activities for experiential education, and has become nationally renowned.

In 1978 he started Woodfield Camps on Lookout Mountain in Georgia, and two years later he decided to return to school to earn credits required to begin his training in medicine.

It was a busy time. "I got married, started medical school and had a baby all within a year," he said. In 1987 the Moores moved to Roanoke, Va., for him to begin his residency as a family medicine physician. After three years they moved back to Chattanooga, where he started a family practice with an emphasis on sports medicine.

As a doctor, Moore’s involvement with outdoor groups increased, including the Baylor Walkabout, with which he still takes trips — one recently to India.

As he became more dedicated to the outdoor life, Moore found that his practice didn’t afford enough time to keep up with this aspect of his life, so he took a more manageable position as an emergency room doctor at Hutcheson Medical Center.

In 1996, Moore, an avid whitewater paddler, took on the position of medical director for the Atlanta Olympic Games events at the Ocoee River.

"Again, I was able to tie my love for the outdoor world into medicine, and being that I was paddling the Ocoee just about every weekend, I guess I was just a sucker for that volunteer job," he said with a laugh.

In the years leading up to his acquisition of the Long Branch property, he worked in the development and management of preventive medicine programs for Parkridge Hospital and Unum Provident Insurance.

He serves on the board of directors of the Wilderness Medical Society, and has run national conferences on the subject of wilderness medicine in Chattanooga for the past seven years. "The Chattanooga area is perfect for these conferences because you have a city and its urban amenities close to tons of places to enjoy outdoor recreation," he said.

Based on that, Moore started Outdoor Chattanooga, a for-profit concern which he eventually handed off to the city of Chattanooga. With the vision of Chris’s friend and former mayor Bob Corker, the concept became one of the country’s signature metropolitan outdoor recreation initiatives.

Moore’s continued involvement in land conservation is extensive — he serves on the boards of the Nature Conservancy of Tennessee, Tennessee Conservation Commission and Tennessee River Gorge Trust. He has also served on the board of the Chattanooga Nature Center and has been an advisor for the Lula Lake Land Trust.

Through all this service his interest has risen for ways that private individuals can invest in land for conservation as well as traditional value.

"I don’t really like the word ‘developer,’ because of what you typically see with residential construction," said Moore, who hopes to move to his own homesite at Long Branch within the next two years. "I just don’t think we have to destroy the earth to live on it."