Over the past 5 years, volunteers and Friends members Bert Slade and Jaime Dickerson have led an extraordinary cleanup effort along the Canyon Ridge Trail at the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. What began as a small project — initially just hiking the trail to build endurance for trips to Big Bend and the Guadalupe Mountains — grew into one of the largest volunteer-led reclamations in the Refuge’s history.
The initial cleanup began simply: after the leaves dropped one fall, a rusted hot water heater was revealed uphill from the trail’s quarter-mile mark. Bert and Jaime hiked it out, spotting and removing a few tires in the process. The true scale of the problem was exposed when they ventured up a stream bed near Bridge #4 and spotted what “could not be unseen — a mountain of auto and truck tires.”
The Long Haul
The volunteers initially estimated the tire pile at about 1,500 tires. Their problem-solving began with logistics. The tires lay in a dry streambed 50 to 100 yards from the road, providing a twisty, workable downhill path to haul them. Jaime approached former Nature Center director Rob Denkhaus with a proposal: if the volunteers could drag the tires to the road, could the Nature Center trailer them away? Rob secured a disposal plan through Fort Worth Code Compliance.
The first trailer load contained 70 tires. Bert and Jaime stopped taking photos of the trailer loads two years later, having already removed 2,317 tires. The early tires were just piled up and easy to remove, but they hid a larger problem: a deeper “glacier” of tires that had been intentionally buried.
A Feat of Strength and Determination
Removing the buried tires required significant force, heavy equipment, and a dedicated crew. Over the course of the project, the volunteers and their team:
- Broke at least three 10,000 lb. winches
- Snapped several 15,000 lb. rated straps
- Bent open multiple half-inch steel oval connecting links
Using tools such as shovels, pry bars, pickaxes, and come-along winches, they eventually removed more than 4,000 tires from the hillside.
For “added fun,” they also removed countless other pieces of debris. This included two boats, one 8-cylinder engine block (which they dragged out on an improvised sled), a vending machine, three toilets, two washing machines, a chain-link fence, and a few thousand pounds of metal.
A Legacy of Conservation
Bert and Jaime’s goal evolved over the years into a simple one: to ensure “no hiker would ever see a tire again” in that ravine. That goal has been achieved, restoring a clean, natural trail for all visitors.
We are deeply grateful to Bert and Jaime, nicknamed “The Tire Bosses,” for their relentless work. Special thanks also go to Neal Heidel and Kyle Clabaugh, who generously joined the effort to yank, carry, stack, and trailer tires, as well as to former Natural Resource Manager Daniel Price and Natural Resource Technician Haley Parrish.
