Jeffers’ Bend Environmental Center and Botanical Gardens is on the grounds of Hopkinsville’s old water treatment plant on the north side of town between Riverside Cemetery and the Pennyrile Parkway. It sits along the North Fork of Little River and includes 40 acres of grassland, a 1-acre lake and a 2.7-mile walking trail.
The water treatment plant dates to 1895. Six buildings on the property have been saved for a variety of uses in the center’s mission to provide education and recreation. The welcome center and museum were originally the treatment plant operator’s quarters. The former distribution and laboratory building is a meeting facility and has three classrooms.
The idea to create an environmental center grew out of the North Fork Little River Committee, established around 1990 by the Pennyrile Resource, Conservation and Development Council. Staff member Charles Turner was an early champion of the effort to identify education and recreational opportunities along the river and he remains a key volunteer for Jeffers’ Bend.
Five years after the river committee was established, then-Mayor Wally Bryan put together a group that was interested in saving the water treatment plant facilities from demolition. By 1999, the Jeffers’ Bend Environmental Center and Botanical Garden had been established. It was named in honor of the late Sherry Jeffers, who was mayor from 1982 to 1986. She was also a former Christian County magistrate. No other woman before or since has been Hopkinsville’s mayor. Jeffers died in 1997. She was 58. Jeffers’ father, Ernest “Dutch” Lackey, was also a Hopkinsville mayor. The family-owned and operated WHOP Radio.
Most of the work done to restore and maintain the buildings and land at Jeffers’ Bend has been done by volunteers. It is open to the public generally from daylight to dusk.
The address is 1000 Metcalfe Lane. It’s accessible by turning onto Metcalfe Lane from North Main Street adjacent to Riverside Cemetery. The phone number is 270-885-5600.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
