Groton Open Space Association

N. Stonington Farm Deal Highlights Recent Open Space Efforts in Southeast CT

NORTH STONINGTON —The Nature Conservancy has protected from development one of the largest tracts of land in eastern Connecticut to be preserved in the last half-century. The organization purchased in December development rights to 563 acres of the Oldhaven Farm on Route 2 for $1.95 million. The Day reported Dec. 31, 2002 that the Hewitt family will continue to own the farm where dairy cows have been milked for nearly 200 years. Sale of development rights to the conservation organization will allow the family to pay property taxes, repair the farm’s infrastructure and update equipment to attract new farming tenants. At one point, the family considering selling part of the land to golf course developers. But in the end, said a family member, “We felt we had an obligation to our ancestors.”
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GROTON-The Connecticut Forest and Park Association of Middlefield has informed GOSA of two recent conservation successes in the Groton-Stonington area. In the autumn of 2002, Wilfred J. Caron donated conservation restrictions covering his 30-acre Christmas tree farm on Route 1 in Groton and also covering his 47-acre forest in Stonington. The restrictions were given to the Connecticut Forest and Park Association.
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NORTH STONINGTON-Three old friends have sold their 85-acre hunting grounds to the Nature Conservancy for $250,000, half of what they said they could have gotten from developers. The property is located on Boom Bridge Road, south of Spalding Park. Kevin Essington, director of the Conservancy’s Pawtucket Borderlands Project, said that the land includes a portion of the Bell Cedar Swamp, one of the largest unprotected and rare Atlantic white cedar swamps in Connecticut. Mr. Essington said in December that the purchase was the conservancy’s first step toward permanently preserving the entire Bell Cedar Swamp. The sellers were David C. Main, Robert S. Appleton and Robert L. Smith, who bought the initial 75 acres of the tract 45 years ago. They said their desire to see the land preserved as they had known it outweighed financial considerations.