Tales of Preservation

Look across the Eastern half of South Mountain and you will find a landscape of incredible beauty.  Pastoral, working lands dotted with orchards, and forests abutting one of the largest contiguous publicly owned forests near the DC-Baltimore metro area.  The lands surrounding Gettysburg have some of the highest growth pressures in Pennsylvania, yet there are landowners dotting the landscape that choose to preserve their property.  Read about those who are choosing to preserve the landscape in the Tales of Preservation, created by the Land Conservancy of Adams County and funded through the South Mountain Mini-Grant program. See the booklet below.

The landowners in this booklet have decided to preserve their properties and have thus created a legacy for future generations. The vehicle for preservation is called a conservation easement, or preservation agreement. An easement is an agreement between the landowner and land conservancy which limits certain uses on all or a portion of a property, while keeping the property in the landowners’ownership and control.


The vision of the Land Conservancy of Adams County is to protect the diverse and distinctive natural resources of Adams County – from the summits of South Mountain to the cool clear native trout waters of the Narrows, from the rich rolling hills of the Fruit Belt to the pitch pine-scrub of the Big Flat Barren, from the amphibian-filled seeps and wetlands of Marsh Creek to the bird-breeding southern grasslands, from the richly cultivated croplands of the east with their interspersed woodland tracts harboring whitetail deer, from the scenic mid-nineteenth century agricultural landscapes of the East Berlin area to the green foal-filled pastures of the Hanover Shoe Farms, from the prized vistas of High Rock and Little Round Top to the boulder-strewn hillside at Devil’s Den.


This is a South Mountain Mini-Grant project.  This project was financed in part by a grant from the Community Conservation Partnerships Program, Environmental Stewardship Fund, under the administration of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Recreation and Conservation.

Tales of Preservation Booklet