Tag: Cacapon River

Houses Won't Ever Be Built Here

Snow crunches under foot as Jim Baker gives a mid-December tour on about 170 acres his hunting club just acquired. The property sits along the Morgan-Hampshire County line in the shadow of Cacapon Mountain bordering Cacapon State Park.

“Basically some rolling hills at low elevations before you see the larger Cacapon Mountain in the background,” Baker said.  “It gives you an idea of what I call the diversity in topography around here.”

This diversity in landscape is one of the factors that make this property resilient, which is why the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust worked to obtain an easement preventing future development.

This property is part of an area in the Potomac Headwaters region of West Virginia designated as some of the most resilient land in the eastern United States.

David Ray is the southern field coordinator for the Open Space Institute, a New York State land trust. The Institute created a $6 million fund with a goal of protecting some of the most resilient land in the northeast and mid-Appalachian region.

Four areas are targeted: Southern New Hampshire and Maine forests, the highlands and Kittatinny Ridge on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border, the Middle Connecticut River and the Potomac headwaters region of West Virginia and Virginia.

“A good way to think about it is sort of like actors on a stage and you may have a stage or a theater where the play is going to change over time, the actors will come and go, but you have that stage and it’s a place where things happen,” Ray said.

The program’s goal is to focus on that stage, in this case natural places where plants and animals can thrive and adapt to changes in the future.

Ray said the hunting club property meets the criteria of being resilient that include variety in the landscape, having the right kind of soil and the connection to other unbroken land- in this case about six thousand acres of Cacapon State Park.

Credit Cecelia Mason / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Landowner Jim Baker describes his property to David Ray of the Open Space Institute and Kelly Watkinson of the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust.

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“We have choices we have to make with the limited funding that’s available for conservation,” Ray said. “By protecting the land areas that are going to be more enduring, we’re going to protect as much of the broad range of biodiversity that we have as possible.”

And Ray pointed out protecting these highly resilient areas also benefits humans.

“The sort of side benefits to that kind of work includes things like maintaining the quality of water that goes into our drinking water sources, preventing flooding from occurring and recreational opportunities,” he said.

The Open Space Institute gave the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust a $210,000 grant to help acquire an easement on a total of about 900 acres owned by the hunting club that will prevent the property from being developed in the future. Land Trust Executive Director Nancy Ailes says her organization raised matching money that included about $60,000 and an easement donation from the hunting club. 

“We always like to hug our landowners,” Ailes said. “If it isn’t for them and their willingness to do this and desire to protect their land none of us would be here at the table today.”

Baker said it’s comforting to know that this rugged piece of property that he and other shareholders have come to love since the hunting club was founded in 1962 will remain untouched.

“You become attached to it over time after hunting on it, walking on it, maintaining it, seeing it through all the seasons and knowing that it’s yours,” Ray said.

“For some of us anyway we want to see that piece of property as it is so at night we can think that’s the way it’s going to be forever,” he added.

The Open Space Institute’s work protecting resilient landscapes is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Stories from the Lost River Valley

Stories and photographs from the Cacapon and Lost River Valley are featured in a book just released by West Virginia University Press.

Listening to the Land features the stories of several owners throughout the watershed who have chosen to preserve their land through the Cacapon and Lost River Land Trust.

“When we signed some of the first easements that the Land Trust did, people started sobbing, literally, in the easement signing in the attorney’s office,” Nancy Ailes, executive director, said. “And I started realizing that there are these great stories behind those tears.”

Ailes wrote a grant proposal and received $50,000 from National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to produce the book. The Trust hired documentary writer Jamie Ross and photographer Tom Cogill to traverse the valley documenting the people, their land and their stories.

“The land is beautiful, I think this valley could be a national park,” Cogill said.

Cogill is primarily a portrait photographer so he approached the landscape the same way he would if he were capturing an image of an individual. There are photos in the book of teenage girls hauling in a deer they shot, scenes of farms, livestock and hay, as well as the highway and power lines bisecting the land.

Cogill is particularly fond of a photo that shows a weathered wood plank wall with graffiti scratched in it.

“It’s the two page spread for the section called ‘The Pull of Home,’” Cogill said. “Probably 100 people have written their name and the date, just kind of scratched it on the wall, some of them have extended stories, others it’s just initials and dates.”

“It’s a portrait, it’s a short story, it talks about the people who live here without showing any of them,” he said.

While Cogill shot photos, Ross interviewed people. The Land Trust chose about 30 whose stories might be interesting, including those who still live in the valley as well as those who grew up there and moved away.

The 150 page book documents families like the Hahn’s, Mongold’s, Slonaker’s and Mills as they participate in activities such as hunting, farming, enjoying meals and gathering mushrooms.

One of Ross’s favorite stories is that of Josh Frye, who comes from a long line of Frye’s who have worked on the family’s farm near Wardensville since Colonial times. Frye’s father and two of his brother’s died in farm accidents.

“And still they could not bring themselves to sell the property,” Ross said. “And part of that too goes with all the funny stories that go along.”

The book details how Frye’s mother was embarrassed when her husband bought a hearse that he parked in the field so he could sleep there and keep an eye out for predators trying to eat the turkeys raised on the farm.

“And Josh speaks so warmly about farming when people used to move from farm to farm to accomplish the task,” Ross said. “They would do haying as a group and move from one place to the next.”

Another profile features Bobby Ludwig from Baker, who the book says went off to college in New England and built a lucrative career on Wall Street.

Ludwig no longer lives full time in Hardy County but he’s bought and preserved thousands of acres of farmland to prevent developers from building houses on it.

Ross said Ludwig had a good comeback when officials wanting to widen the state highway near his farm suggested he could just go buy another piece of property in exchange for the one they’d take.

“And he said ‘well how about I take your girlfriend and spend the night with her and you just go get another one,’” she said. “It’s not just the attachment it’s the wit and wisdom and everything.”

Ross said there were two thoughts she heard over and over again as she interviewed people: it’s important to leave the land better then you found it, and your word is your bond.

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