GRAFTON TOWNSHIP – Sometime within the next two months, the state will finally take ownership of nearly 3,700 acres of the Mahoosuc Range in the Grafton Notch region.

It will protect 3,688 acres of stunning, rugged landscape that largely drapes the shoulders of Old Speck and Sunday River Whitecap mountains.

Descending to the southeast from the 4,180-foot summit of Old Speck, one of Maine’s highest peaks, the Grafton Notch parcel is surrounded on three sides by Maine Public Reserve Lands and Grafton Notch State Park, a popular tourist destination.

The Maine Department of Conservation’s Bureau of Parks and Lands won’t be purchasing the $3 million parcel from Wagner Forest Management Ltd. of Lyme, N.H., former landowner Bayroot LLC’s land agent.

Instead, it’ll be buying it from the Trust for Public Lands-Maine, which bought the parcel in mid-December after realizing that the state’s efforts to raise the money would take too long, according to Sam Hodder, the trust’s Mahoosuc project manager.

“We saw it as the first step on the way to complete conservation,” Hodder said late Wednesday afternoon in Portland during a three-way phone conference with Kathy DeCoster of the federal Trust for Public Lands in Washington, D.C.

The trust also holds an option to buy the neighboring Stowe Mountain parcel of 3,300 acres in Newry from landowner Carthage Lumber of Canada. Although the property is in the preliminary appraisal process, the price is $1.1 million, bureau Deputy Director Alan Stearns said by phone Wednesday afternoon in Augusta.

Regarding the Stowe parcel, Hodder said the trust has been talking with the landowner about buying it for more than a year, whereas the Grafton land buy was several years in the making.

Besides providing continued opportunity for sustainable timber harvesting, the Grafton acquisition helps guarantee permanent protection for existing trails.

That includes ITS 82, a snowmobile trail that provides a critical link to a Maine-New Hampshire network that runs through the property along Bear River.

“We’ve just guaranteed that 3,700 acres will be public access hunting, hiking and snowmobiling. That land will never be posted against hunting. We’re buying it for perpetuity,” Hodder added.

Part of the as yet unopened western side of the 42-mile Grafton Loop Trail is on Stowe Mountain and within the Grafton Notch parcel. That’s why the property’s public protection is critical to the trail’s completion, he said.

The Grafton Loop Trail is a newly-constructed Appalachian Trail spur that runs from East Baldpate Mountain across several peaks before ascending the southeast slopes of Old Speck and reconnecting to the A.T.

“So, (Stowe) really is a critical link, because it rounds out the high summits of Route 26 within the Table Rock and Old Speck viewshed. It certainly is a beautiful valley. These are the two final pieces of the puzzle. We’re just one step closer,” with the Grafton parcel bought, Hodder said.

According to Steve Wight, chairman of Newry’s Board of Selectmen, the project secures multiple-use access in a region that relies heavily on its spectacular natural landscape to maintain its recreational, tourism and wood products economies.

Gov. John Baldacci announced on Friday that the $2 million from the federal government was awarded to the Grafton project, which was the nation’s top-ranked U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Legacy Program project in federal fiscal year 2007.

“The final appropriation has totally cleared Congress, but we won’t get the check until closing,” Stearns said.

Most of the rest of the money came from a Land for Maine’s Future grant of $660,000, coupled with $40,000 from the Maine Department of Transportation’s Scenic Byways Program, and $10,000 from the Maine Outdoor Heritage Program.