
	Triangle Land Conservancy 1101 Haynes Street Suite 205 Raleigh, NC 27604 919.833.3662

Landowners Help Save Diverse Landscapes

Generous gift saves slice of Orange County history

(Chapel Hill, NC) – To paraphrase Will Rogers, they ain’t making land like the Irvin Farm any more. At 269 acres, this bucolic Orange County property, with its mix of forest and farmland, is a rare rural space near Chapel Hill.

Elinor and J. Logan Irvin owned this property on Jones Ferry Road, just a few miles west of University Lake. A Kenan Professor of Biochemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill, Logan was one of TLC’s founding board members. When he died in 1984, TLC established the Logan Irvin Fund, a stewardship endowment fund, in his honor. Later that year, Mrs. Irvin contacted TLC to see if the organization would be interested in the property and subsequently left the property to TLC in her will.

Mrs. Irvin lived on her beloved farm for many years after her husband’s death. She died in January 2007 and the property was transferred to TLC for ongoing stewardship.

“This gift is significant not only because of the Irvins’ generosity and altruism, but also because it is such a wonderful tribute to the landscape in which they lived,” says Tandy Jones, TLC protection specialist. “The property itself is significant because of its location and size. There are few, if any, tracts of that size remaining in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District.”

The Irvin farmhouse in Orange County. Photo by Ida Phillips Lynch.

A cedar-lined driveway leads to the 100-plus-year-old farmhouse where the Irvins once lived. The property is forested in mature hardwoods and pines, including some 100-year-old trees, and contains several intermittent streams and one major stream. About 50 acres of pasture and hay meadow on the farm are going through natural succession and slowly changing over to forestland. Mammals such as bobcat and gray fox and birds like wild turkey that inhabit unfragmented forested blocks inhabit the property. Migratory songbirds like ovenbird and Kentucky warbler likely nest here.

TLC will manage the property in accordance with Mrs. Irvin’s will and with the goal of conserving the property’s historical and natural features. TLC staff is exploring a variety of management ideas, including the possibility of developing an environmental education facility on the site.

“It’s an ideal spot for environmental education because of its accessibility and proximity to Chapel Hill and Carrboro,” says Jones. “Its mix of habitats could showcase sustainable land stewardship practices.”

Trinity School Helps Swing New Hope Deal

The conservation corridor and trail system along New Hope Creek in Durham and Orange counties continues to take shape. In January 2007, Orange County, through its Lands Legacy Program, acquired a 26.5-acre tract from Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill for $130,000 to complete a land corridor from Duke Forest to the Orange-Durham county line. Trinity School played a key role by acquiring one tract from a private seller and packaging that land with its own property.

This map shows the many pieces of the puzzle that have gone into protecting the New Hope corridor in Orange County downstream of Duke Forest.

TLC worked with the school for several years to bring this project to fruition, including securing funding for the project from the NC Ecosystem Enhancement Program (EEP).

The property is sandwiched between two other Lands Legacy Program parcels on New Hope Creek. To the north is a 22-acre tract purchased in 2006 from Wade and Carolyn Penny (also in partnership with TLC) and to the south is a.1-acre tract at the Durham County line purchased in 2005. Durham County owns land along the creek all the way to US 15-501, including property immediately across the county line from the Trinity School parcel.

Only a handful of Durham County tracts need to be protected to connect the corridor to Jordan Lake. Upstream, about 2,200 acres of the corridor are conserved by Duke Forest and TLC’s Johnston Mill Nature Preserve. The New Hope Creek conservation partners are beginning to develop parks and greenways along the creek, including developing an access area near Erwin Road.

Longtime Wake Tobacco Farmer Buys Conservation

Reuben Broadwell has been farming in eastern Wake County for almost 50 years. He didn’t want to stop farming, but when the tobacco buy-out came along in 2004 he didn’t see a future in farming.

He also didn’t want to see his farmland developed. So when Chad Guthrie of The Trust for Public Land (TPL) offered to buy portions of his “Poor Boy Farms” for conservation, Broadwell was willing to listen." I didn’t want to sell it, but I saw there was nothing in it,” he said, referring to the land’s agricultural possibilities. “I didn’t want a gang of houses on it. I just got the feeling that we need some land left. Houses everywhere... I don’t think we need that in Wake County.”

In February 2007 Broadwell sold 2 tracts totaling 145 acres for inclusion in the Mark’s Creek Rural Lands Initiative—a conservation partnership between TLC, Wake County and TPL. Broadwell received $3.5 million in the deals.

Broadwell grew up in the area on his father’s farm and eventually began farming the family’s property with his brother. In the 1970s, he purchased 92 acres on Lake Myra and approximately 90 acres in Shotwell. Until 2004 he grew tobacco on about 86 acres—the rest of the land was wooded.

Reuben Broadwell on the property he sold for conservation as part of the Mark's Creek Rural Lands Initiative. Photo by Ida Phillips Lynch.

The 92-acre Lake Myra tract has about 500 feet of frontage on the west side of Mark’s Creek and Lake Myra at the northern end of the lake and includes about 9,000 feet of frontage on parts of two tributaries that feed into Mark’s Creek. Protecting the property will help preserve water quality and wildlife habitat.

The 53-acre Shotwell tract protects about 4,400 feet (0.8 mile) of frontage on streams that feed into Mark’s Creek. About three-quarters of the property is in hardwood forest. The property preserves water quality and wildlife habitat, and provides a key link between other tracts purchased through the Mark’s Creek Initiative.

These purchases increase the amount of land conserved in the initiative to 727 acres—the beginning of a planned assemblage of tracts that will create a corridor along Mark’s Creek between Lake Myra and the Neuse River.