NORWAY – The Western Foothills Land Trust has made another step forward in its mission to protect unique natural resources and open space in the greater Oxford Hills area by acquiring more than 100 acres in the Witt Swamp Preserve.

The area is between Crockett Ridge Road and Pleasant Street.

The 111.5-acre parcel, known as the Witt Swamp Extension, will provide additional water quality protection as well as the potential for a 2.5-mile hiking and mountain biking trail, Lee Dassler of the Western Foothills Land Trust said in a statement released Monday.

The parcel includes approximately 47.7 acres of forested freshwater wetland, 6.9 acres of shrub-scrub freshwater wetland and approximately 4,301 linear feet of stream as well as approximately 56.9 acres of upland buffer.

The project will link the Witt Swamp Preserve and the Shepard’s Farm Preserve by the old Witt Cart Road, which historically connected farms along the Crockett Ridge peninsula with the early town of Rustfield, now known as Norway.

“It’s a great opportunity for people to get into the cedar swamp,” Dassler said Monday. The primarily white cedar swamp includes a variety of botanical ecotones. The dense forested wetlands include scatterings of talus rocks and smaller erratics left by generous glaciers, she said.

The 141-acre Witt Swamp Preserve, named after Norway’s first blacksmith, Benjamin Witt, was purchased by the Trust in 2004.

The 20-acre Shepard’s Farm Family Preserve, off Crockett Ridge Road, was donated by the Bill Detert family of Norway to the Land Trust in 2010 and provides frontage on the western side of the swamp.

The project will  allow the trust and community mountain bike trail-building partners to develop a 2.5-mile nonmotorized recreational trail linking the trails at Shepard’s Farm Family Preserve to the Witt Swamp Preserve Parking area off Pleasant Street.

A bridge will be built to cross Bog Brook and access Crockett Ridge, she said.

“There’s an old cart road boundary between old and new sections (of Witt Swamp Preserve) going east and west that Benjamin Witt and other early settlers used,”  Dassler said. Because the road originally had no bridge or causeway the Crockett Ridge area was rather isolated, she said.

One of two trails that will be opened will use the east-west cart road, she said.

In her statement, Dassler said the project evolved during the past year as volunteers and staff scouted the feasibility of a potential trail route, and worked with the owner to define the project parcel.

Dassler said recreational trail program grants will be submitted to fund the trail work and infrastructure.  The Land Trust will retain and manage the premises for its natural resource values, including recreation.

Dassler said Monday that the work probably won’t be completed until 2015.

Funding for the land purchase was provided by the Maine Natural Resource Conservation.

ldixon@sunjournal.com