Memorial Park Set To Open March, 2025

Putnam County will dedicate its Memorial Park next March, the five-year anniversary of the tornado that killed 19 Putnam County residents.

County Mayor Randy Porter said the project was delayed because it took several months to get the necessary permitting for the project from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Porter said they are currently hauling in dirt to level out the site and plan to put sod down in the fall.

“We’ve already got, the memorial statue has already been completed and that was the big thing we were wanting to make sure we had it done,” Porter said. “The rest of it will just be weather, and you know we’ve had some good, dry weather, so (if) everything works out right, I don’t see any future delays, hopefully.”

Porter said the park will include open green space as well as benches, trees, and a site dedicated to all of the first responder agencies that responded to the tornado.

“We won’t have the statue and all those kind of things, we won’t have those open or maybe even up yet,” Porter said. “We may wait until later on after the first of the year to actually put those in and, you know, a few days before the actual dedication.”

Porter said he hopes the opening of the park will give the Putnam County community a sense of closure from the March 2020 tornado.

“We did the Hope Park that we built and dedicated, and that was more of just a green space to kind of, for a calm place, and the folks didn’t want anything that memorialized the victims,” Porter said. “But we wanted to do another park that memorializes for those families and so that we don’t forget those folks that lost their lives.”

Porter said he expects the main portion of the park to be finished with construction at some point in the fall.