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A spirit that is not afraid

Ditching the asphalt

David Phillips drives his Ford truck through a field of mud Saturday morning at The Great American Park. The 165-acre park also offers areas for rock crawling and ATV riding. (Emily Adams / Photo Editor)
David Phillips drives his Ford truck through a field of mud Saturday morning at The Great American Park. The 165-acre park also offers areas for rock crawling and ATV riding. (Emily Adams / Photo Editor)

To get a feel of what The Great American Park is about, just take a look at the name.

Located five miles from campus, the park covers 165 acres of land and offers a place for people to enjoy mud riding, rock crawling and ATV racing.

"I was just thinking that if I can create a place for people to go for outdoor recreation and entertainment, then it can help on our financial ends," said John Glass, park owner. "I looked at it as a financial investment. I wanted to do something unique."

The park is separated into different areas depending on which activity interests visitors.

"It started out as more of a mud-riding place\0xAD--people with trucks and four wheelers," said John's daughter Courtney Glass, graduate student in English. "But, then (we met) a local group called the AU Crawlers--they do rock crawling. So we met them and made an addition to the park."

Rock crawlers use their vehicles to drive up excavated trenches and hills filled with truck-sized boulders, which can seem impassable.

"The front half of the park is mostly large mud-riding areas and trails that wind all through the woods," Courtney said. "The whole back of the property are rock properties that stretch on for acres.

"Some are for, like, stock trucks where you don't really have to have done anything to your truck, and then there are the really difficult ones where you really need to have made some sort of modification to your vehicle. We've got a little bit of everything for everybody."

John came up with his idea for the park after growing up mud riding, and he pitched the idea to Tom Hayley, local businessman and land owner.

John, who excavates all the trenches and moves the estimated $140,000 of rocks himself, said he added his own creative touch to the park, giving the attractions he built names like Achilles' Heel, the Boomerang, Montezuma, the Big Amazon and Hogwallow.

"I dreamed 'em up," John said. "When we were growing up hunting my dad used to talk about the roughest place to go hunting was the hogwallow.

Well, the worst place on the site is very similar soil characteristics and mud, so I named it after my father, and that got it started."

The park, which used to be a golf course, has only been around for a year, but its impact on the Auburn community is accelerating.

"We heard about it through some friends of ours in Phenix City, so word's getting out," said Jay Shields, a first-time visitor who brought along his 7-year-old daughter and 7-year-old niece.

Shawn Pugh, junior in agricultural economics, said he has enjoyed riding ATVs at the park since he came last year .

"Me and my buddies--we do this all the time," Pugh said. "Oh yeah, its a lot of fun."

Coolers and alcohol are allowed, but the park puts on the brakes when it comes to glass bottles because of the possibility of broken glass slashing tires and lowering the safety of the park.

The park, run by family members and friends, puts an emphasis on providing a family-friendly environment, stationing security guards at the front gates. The guards, off-duty police officers from Columbus, Ga., also patrol the land.

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"We knew it was a family-friendly environment," Shields said. "We looked on the Internet, and we had friends come up last year.

"They said it was really great and that there was police and security and things like that, so we felt good about it."

Shields and his family were spectating for the day, riding around watching the rock crawlers and mud riders, which is typical for some visitors.

Visitors pay a $10 admission fee; entrance is free for those under the age of 7, and everyone signs a participant-release waiver.


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