NEWRY – A Cumberland businessman and philanthropist donated 500 acres of rugged land in Newry to the Mahoosuc Land Trust Friday.
The Robert Stewart parcel encompasses the three summits of Puzzle Mountain and five miles of the Grafton Loop Trail corridor. It is to be known as the “Stewart Family Preserve.”
“We are enormously grateful,” stated Landon Fake, president of the trust’s board of directors, in a news release Friday.
The 3,142-foot Puzzle Mountain is in the southeast portion of Newry. It is the prominent local landmark visible throughout the area, dominating the view looking north-northeast from Main Street in Bethel, trust Executive Director Jim Mitchell said in a news release.
“The gift is the largest gift of land to the Mahoosuc Land Trust to date,” Mitchell stated.
The second-largest gift, he said Tuesday, was 65 acres in Woodstock by Mike and Priscilla Dolan of Florida.
But while that land was given on the condition that it be sold, which it was, Stewart’s parcel is to be held by the trust and used primarily for hiking and snowshoeing.
“There’s not a lot of value there for timber or development, because it is high and inaccessible,” Mitchell said.
The land is to be conserved in its current state, with public access via the Loop Trail, a snowmobile trail and the potential for other trails in the future.
The trust, Mitchell said, may also create a management plan that includes the harvesting of timber from a portion of the land at some future date.
Last fall at Newry Planning Board meetings, Stewart said he would donate the land to the trust if the board approved his five-lot subdivision on an abutting 250-acre parcel he has retained.
After working through the subdivision application for the Preserve of Puzzle Mountain, planners approved it.
Stewart is the visionary behind creation of the new, Grafton Loop Trail, a rugged, 42-mile back-country path through the Mahoosuc Mountains.
The trail leads south from the Appalachian Trail near the summit of Baldpate Mountain, and along ridges on both sides of Bear River Valley.
The loop trail rejoins the Appalachian Trail near the summit of Old Speck Mountain.
Fake said the trail on the northeast side of the valley has been open for two years, while the remainder is expected to open in the fall of this year.
The Mahoosuc Land Trust is a community-based nonprofit land conservation organization serving central Oxford County. Currently, it owns eight other parcels of conservation land and holds easements on four other parcels, Mitchell added.
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