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  • The Public’s Water and a Public Garden:A Case Study in Public History
  • Barbara J. Howe

There it was, rusting away on a wooded hillside just out of sight from Route 7 east of Morgantown, a road that Ralph Cale, Barbara Boggs, and I traveled frequently and which was one route to the West Virginia Botanic Garden (WVBG). “It” was Ralph Lemley’s tractor. Cale and Boggs were his grandchildren and, with other family members, had told me many stories about that tractor and its importance to the Tibbs Run Reservoir that served the City of Morgantown from 1912 to 1969. The reservoir is now the site of the West Virginia Botanic Garden on Tyrone Road in Monongalia County.

Lemley was the resident caretaker of the site for over forty years and had careened down the steep hill between his house and the reservoir basin on that tractor. However, we had never talked about whether it still existed. It was always “just” an artifact that prompted stories and helped me develop a mental image of their pater familias as someone who was a tinkerer, someone who had even built this tractor with help from his father and used it to “commute” to his job down the hill.

Then, in September 2012, Cale and I discovered, each from a different source but within a few days of each other, that the tractor still existed and that we had permission to check it out. Thus it was that, on September 16th, West Virginia Botanic Garden, Inc. (WVBG, Inc.) Executive Director George Longenecker, Cale, Boggs, Cale’s daughter Sarah, and I set out to find it. (Hereafter, I will use WVBG when referring to the Garden and WVBG, Inc. when referring to the organization.) Talk about the power of an artifact! More stories poured out from Cale and Boggs as they rediscovered the tractor and photographed every section in detail. We found out that it really was built on a Model A truck body, confirming one version of its origin, but we had never heard about the fifty-five-gallon drum or the sections of track tied on the back as counterweights for that trip down the hill.

I do not know whether the tractor will ever go back to its “home,” but the tractor stories had prompted many other stories about Lemley, and those [End Page 1] stories led to stories about the reservoir, and those stories provided invaluable information for a multifaceted public history project entitled “‘No More Wiggle-Tail Water’: Interpreting the History of Morgantown’s Water Supply at the West Virginia Botanic Garden.” Mr. Lemley and his tractor would have a prominent role in that story.

Before further discussing the public history project, it is important to introduce the three major organizations now involved in the development of the former reservoir property. First, the City of Morgantown has owned the property since September 1950. Second, the Morgantown City Council appoints the members of the Morgantown Utility Board (MUB), which supplies water and sewerage to the city and surrounding areas. Finally, the West Virginia Botanic Garden, Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) organization that has a twenty-five year lease from the city and MUB to manage the site as a botanic garden, open to the public free of charge every day from dawn to dusk.

In 1981, long before there was a place for a garden, the Landscape Arboretum Task Force, a group of dedicated volunteers, met to identify the needs of such a garden and discuss potential sites. West Virginia University (WVU) faculty Bradford Bearce, now professor emeritus of horticulture, and George Longenecker, now professor emeritus of landscape architecture, were among the first members of that group.1 In November 2012, Bearce completed many years as a member of the board of directors, while Longenecker is currently the organization’s executive director.

Two years later, the task force changed its name to West Virginia Botanic Garden, and, on December 13, 1983, was incorporated by the West Virginia Secretary of State. The purpose was,

To conduct, support to develop the science of horticulture and all activities related to the study, propagation and culture of plants; to stimulate and...

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