In 1939, when the Quabbin Reservoir in Western Massachusetts began to fill, it was the largest man-made drinking water reservoir in the world. Today it supplies some of the country's purest drinking water to over 40% of Massachusetts residents in 46 towns and cities. Many of these communities are far to the East, in the metropolitan Boston area. Beneath its pristine waters, and among the trees of the surrounding protected watershed lie the stories of the 2500 residents, 1100 buildings and 7500 graves that were moved when these lands of the Swift River Valley were taken by eminent domain to create the Quabbin.

Almost 50 years later, in 1984, with the creation of the Visitor Information & Interpretation Center and the founding of Friends of Quabbin, surviving former residents from the towns and villages that were flooded by Quabbin, began meeting at what they have called Tuesday Tea, and Lois Doubleday Barnes began recording oral histories, giving a voice to the people whose stories had not been heard.

Lois herself is a former resident of the town of Prescott, one of the towns that ceased to exist in order that Boston have adequate water. In all, four towns were abandoned, leveled and flooded. The other three were Greenwich, Dana and Enfield.

Lois was born in 1920. As the state of Massachusetts had been looking at the Swift River Valley as a potential source of water beginning in the 1890s, she relates that "the whole talk of the valley being eliminated was . . . something I heard from the time I can remember." When asked if the people of the valley towns offered any resistance, she remembers that, certainly "there was a lot of protest, but it couldn't go anywhere, because, what did we have? We had [but] two representatives in the legislature." There were legislative hearings, but they were at the other end of the state in Boston, and inaccessible to these Western Massachusetts farmers and small business people. Though they were paid for their land, few received compensation for their lost businesses and farms. And, though many jobs were created for the planning and construction of the dam and 25,000 acre reservoir, almost all of those jobs went to contractors and the people that they brought with them ~ not to the dislocated valley residents.

Ultimately the citizens accepted their fate, understanding that, as Lois said, "it was the greatest good for the greatest number of people." They quietly packed up their lives, dug up their dead, and moved elsewhere. Her old friend Sally comments that, "they weren't angry, they just weren't angry people . . . they were heartbroken."

Many surviving former valley residents find the beauty and sanctuary they feel at Quabbin today to be a "healing epitaph" to the tragedies of their earlier banishment. Lois told us that Quabbin is where she goes to "recharge her energies." The waters of Quabbin and its surrounding protected watershed combine to form an "accidental" wilderness of some 120 square miles. Many of the former residents of the four flooded towns have been, for many years, actively promoting environmental education about the Quabbin and successfully resisting initiatives to increase recreational use of the reservoir. They are passionate activists on behalf of the landscape of their beloved Swift River Valley home.

Standing with Lois near the Winsor Dam, looking out over the vast expanse of reservoir waters, old sorrows commingle with feelings of healing and appreciation of Quabbin's beauty. We were touched by the poignant words of her old friend Eleanor, "I have two beauties ~ the one that I remember, and the one that is here now" ~ as well as by the words of her friend, Norman "Pete" Tandy, "I find after all these years, there lives within me still, some special sense that here, in this sweet water valley, here was home."

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