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Elkins has been a Tree City with an active Tree Board since 2008, the year the City accepted the Kump House on South Davis Avenue. For several years the Tree Board has been adding trees in the historic apple orchard, the wetland where the Kump pasture used to be, and the City Tree Nursery located in the garden that used to produce food for the large Kump family.
The water that drains from the hillsides and parking lots south of highway 33 has eroded the land near Goddin Creek. Now it is not suitable for horses to graze where local people remember seeing them in the old pasture. When the ground became so wet that horses lost their shoes in the mud, and haying machinery began to sink in the wet soil, we had to recognize that we had a wetland. At that point (c. 2013) AmeriCorps member Alyssa Hanna added 600 willow striplings to help channel the creek.
Soon botanist Elizabeth Byers brought a group to study our wetland plants, and her team found 36 native wetland plants growing where cows and horses used to graze. With this information,
Kump property next to old highway 33 was designated as a certified West Virginia Wetland, and we began to teach our young students that a wetland is like a "liver for the river."
In fact we now know that the dark colored soil in a wetland is the best place for nature to trap carbon and clean both air and water naturally. Swamps and wetlands are our best natural defense against carbon pollution and global warming. Thanks to the City of Elkins we have our own carbon clearing system in town at Kump Center.
Two City Council and Tree Board members Marylyn Cuonzo and Nanci Bross-Fregonara began working with Friends of Trees led by Katy McClane to create a City Tree Nursery where the Kump garden used to be. The Tree Board has been responsible for adding new heritage apple trees in the old orchard, as well as 16 Sycamore trees near the south fence, and about that many River Birch trees between the Sycamores and Goddin Creek. They are also responsible for creating a Tree Walk with numbers and labels for the trees that are not in the wetland.
In addition to the City Council, the City Water Department has been working with us to find the leaks at KEC so that we can continue to work with the Tree Board. Wes Lambert has been working with us to track patters of leaking water.
Jon Distefano, who is retired from the City Water Department, has volunteered his own time to fix frozen water pipes and add a new hydrant near the City Tree Nursery. He has been our best help with the problem of tracking down where the leaks have developed and how to stop losing water inside and outside historic Kump House.
It takes good government and great volunteers to grow trees and solve other local problems.