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Crews Refurbish the Old Town Spring That Made UGA Possible
An Oasis
When they need to, the UGA crews can dam the spring’s trickle and create a wetland.
What's taking shape is an oasis
on the edge of old urban Athens,
a cool, green, wet mini-park
filled with native wetland plants
that's home to the spring's nearly
famous resident crayfish and dis
plays its own industrial history as
well. In large part the brainchild
of UGA Grounds chief Dexter
Adams, the rehab project is at the
"intersection of urban habitat and
historic preservation," in Perissi's
words. "We're trying to not just
rehabilitate the ecology of it..."
she says. "We wanted to keep
those cultural components intact
as well."
The train tracks used to run up
alongside the loading docks on
the Thornton Brothers building,
and it's possible that the stream
runs precisely alongside them
only because they were laid at a
low point that was never brought
up to the grade of the surrounding streets.
Preserving them—and bringing them into .new
by excavating them—therefore made sense in
the design process. The old industrial feel is
balanced, though, by the bulrushes, dragon's
tail and other native wetland plants going in.
They're all cut back now, but once they grow
they remember," he says. "I don't
know how accurate it is, but it's a
good story."
Resident Critters
It does indeed seem that the
spring has a number of friends
in town. Many are interested in
the resident crayfish, which the
crew has provided with "shel
ters" made of bricks and brick
fragments, propped up against
the old brick wall to give shade
and a hiding place to the crit
ters. Many, though, appreciate
the spring for what it represents,
even though its full history is
unknown. The original springhead
is probably just up-slope, per
haps underneath the UGA Central
Duplicating Services building
where Athens resident Hal Cofer
remembers that his father's store, Coferis Feed
and Seed (the original occupant of that build
ing), had a drinking fountain of city tap water
decades ago that was cooled by a copper coil
run through the spring. (See the July 2005
Flagpole story on the town spring, or read it
online, for more of that story.)
A block off Broad St. downtown UGA crews are revealing more of the old spring that
started the whole thing.
Ail that work, though, has been tempered
not only by the uniqueness of the project, but
also by the interest it has aroused. "It's amaz
ing how many people are interested in this
place," says crew member Jason Hubbard, cit
ing regular lunch-hour visitors. "People come
by and just share something with you that
The University, meanwhile, does have
plans to do more for the old spring someday
when it redevelops the area known as the
"northeast precinct" of campus on the UGA
Architects' planning maps. For the time being,
though, the parking lot will remain—though
the improvement to the stream means a lot
to some. Says friend-of-the-spring Gary Crider,
"Just the gesture goes a long way."
A Copious Spring
Epilogue: Near the end of its work, the
crew hit bedrock at the upper end of the site.
The next design decision is not yet made—
how to treat the rock, whether to have the
water flow over or around it. More importantly,
through its labor the team has learned a little
bit more about the history of the spring,
and has unwittingly brought it closer to its
original condition, pre-railroad tracks, pre-
Athens. After all, at the opening of his Annals
of Athens, Georgia, 1801-1901, Augustus
Longstreet Hull quotes a contemporary news
paper description of the 1801 visit here by the
committee looking for a college site: "... in
the midst of an extensive bed of rock issues a
copious spring of excellent water..."
Ben Emanuel
long-neglected but historically sig-
nificant piece of the Athens land-
&fla\ scape is finally beginning to get
its due: the old town spring—the
"bold spring" or "rock spring" of the earliest
local writings—is getting some much-deserved
attention from the grounds department at the
University of Georgia, which knocked down
the Thornton Brothers Paper Company build
ing adjacent to the spring in 2004. Sadly,
the University's first move back then was to
build a parking lot where Thornton Brothers
had stood, but that work did at least give the
spring a wider strip of green to run through,
and increased its visibility.
In the years since, the University has
planted a few small river birch trees near
the spring, but not much else has happened
there—until this spring and summer, when
piece by piece the site of the spring has been
spiffed up. First came new brickwork and a
sturdy wooden barrier to prevent stormwater
(and errant cars) from getting into the spring
from directly above on Spring Street. The
drainage system at the bottom end of the
block—along Spring Street from South Street
down to Fulton Street—was much improved,
partly with the addition of large curbing
stones made up of granite slabs found onsite.
Now, the most significant part
of the "rehabilitation" project, in ^
the words of UGA Grounds staffer 5
Jennifer Perissi, is nearly com- g
plete. Grounds crews have worked 5?
steadily throughout the first half
of this summer (including the
early-June heat wave) to "muck
out" the dirt in the spring's strip
of territory, creating a miniature
wetland watered by the town
spring and revealing the old rail
road tracks that still lie there.
out, the site will be far greener than it has
been in many years.
Perissi says the unique project has been
collaborative since the start, with design
happening in the field and benefitting from
enthusiastic teamwork, from the horticulurists
to the brickmasons. And, says horticulturist
Leila Shutt, there's been plenty of backbreak
ing work, too. On the other hand, her crew
can take comfort that the results of their labor
will survive the drought. "We haven't ever had
to bring in water to water these plants," Shutt
says with a smile.
No Drought Here
The site has been designed so that the
spring's waters spread out, watering the whole
low area rather than just a ditch alongside the
old brickwork along Spring Street. On some
recent days, when the plants had just been
put in, a plastic "elbow" served to dam up
the water at the site's lower end, where the
stream enters a culvert. On those days, the
whole lower part of the site was filled with
standing water which, in addition to helping
get the plants established, gave the place the
look of a swamp just after a rain.
10 FLAGP0LE.C0M-JULY 9,2008
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