Overton Park is a 342-acre public park in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a nine-hole golf course, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the Memphis Zoo, the Memphis College of Art, the Levitt Shell, Rainbow Lake, Veterans Plaza, the Greensward, two playgrounds, and the 126-acre Old Forest State Natural Area.

History

On November 14, 1901, the City of Memphis purchased a 342-acre tract of land from Nashville residents Ella and Overton Lea (for $110,000) and “Lea’s Woods” became Overton Park. The park was designed by landscape architect George Kessler as part of a comprehensive plan that also included Martin Luther King-Riverside Park and the Memphis Parkway System. The park was officially named after John Overton, a co-founder of Memphis, on July 25, 1902.

In the late 1950s Overton Park became the subject of controversy when 26 of its 342 acres were condemned by the State of Tennessee for a planned right-of-way for Interstate 40. Residents of Midtown Memphis formed an advocacy group called Citizens to Preserve Overton Park and challenged the plan in court. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in CPOP’s favor in the landmark case Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe. The 26 acres were finally deeded back to the City of Memphis in 1987.

Overton Park was selected for inclusion in the 2009 Landslide Program sponsored by The Cultural Landscape Foundation. This program “spotlights great places designed by seminal and regionally influential landscape figures, which are threatened with change.”