Throwback Thursday: The story of William Weldon Peete

There’s a good chance you’ve driven past it, launched a boat there, biked the trails, or walked along the riverfront at Weldon Peete Park. But have you ever wondered who exactly was Weldon Peete? Well today, we’re digging into one of Bowling Green’s quieter local mysteries.

Weldon Peete Park today is known as one of Bowling Green’s great outdoor recreation spaces along the Barren River, with boat ramps, greenway trails, and mountain biking paths. It sits adjacent to the City’s developing Riverfront Park. Weldon Peete Park’s name reaches back into Bowling Green’s industrial riverfront era, long before the area became a recreation destination.

William Weldon Peete was born in 1866 in Virginia, just one year after the Civil War ended. Records show he later settled in Bowling Green and became connected to one of the city’s important industrial businesses, the Park City Coal & Lumber Company. That company mattered because, at the time, the Barren River was deeply tied to commerce and transportation. Coal, lumber, the nearly-new L&N railroad that was completed in 1859, and river access all helped Bowling Green grow into a regional commercial hub.

Park City Coal Company was established in 1893 by brothers Richard and Weldon Peete, who had come to Kentucky from Virginia. The business, at 10th and Clay St., was located near the rail line for easy delivery of the coal that was Bowling Green’s primary source of heat and power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The firm later added lumber and building supplies to its successful operation. Weldon Peete’s sons joined him in the business. He passed in 1937, but the business remained in the family for over 65 years. The sale of coal was discontinued in January 1959 when the company was bought by the Motley family.

At one point, the Peete family lived near Hospital Hill in Downtown Bowling Green, and next there’s record of them living on Baker Hill in the 1930s when a tornado ravaged parts of town. Weldon Peete’s son was also named Weldon Peete, and he continued his father’s business until it sold. There doesn’t appear to be a readily available public dedication explaining exactly why the park was named for him. No marker or monument, no major published biography. This happens frequently in local history, as the people of the era were familiar with the stories, only they don’t always get preserved and told over and over again.

What we do know is that the riverfront near Weldon Peete Park sits in an area that was once far more industrial than recreational. Bowling Green’s river economy helped fuel commerce for generations before the community began transforming the riverfront into green space and recreation areas we enjoy today. What makes that park even more special is its nearness to what was once hand-carved beech trees on the riverbank, with etchings from the first 13 Longhunters, European explorers, to come through this region. Names like Drake and Buchanon stuck around. The name Weldon Peete Park may serve as a small surviving reminder of Bowling Green’s river town identity, a connection between the city’s industrial past and the recreational future of the river.

That’s the beauty of local history. Sometimes the story isn’t fully finished yet.