QuoteThe North Florida Land Trust closed on the largest land deal in the conservation group's 16-year history last week as it purchased about 4 square miles in the Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve.
The 2551 acres the land trust purchased for $750,000 is mostly marshland, Executive Director Jim McCarthy said. The total number of acres the land trust now owns is 5,850 acres or about 9.1 square miles.
He said before the deal was finalized Dec. 18, the estate of Theodore Carey — who died in 2014 — had owned the largest privately held tract of land in the Timucaun.
The property the land trust purchased is located along an 11-mile stretch from Interstate 95 in Duval County to Nassau Sound. It includes all the marshes off the northern end of Black Hammock Island surrounding the Eagle Bend Island community north of Yellow Bluff Road plus about 800 acres of marsh land along I-95.
While the majority of the land wasn't developable, there is a 40 acre island next to Interstate 95 in the middle of the St. Johns River that could have been developed.
The purchase will protect "oyster reefs, saltwater and brakish cordgrass and black needle rush marshes that spread out for miles along the rivers's edge."
McCarthy said the land trust worked on the deal for about a year coming close to closing on it several times. He said some of the sticking points centered around title issues as some of the parcels of land included in the deal dated back to the 1850s.
"There were a number of broken links in the title and it made it a real challenge," he said.
In the early 1900s, the state of Florida reclaimed part of the land that had been deeded over to a railroad company for development.
http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/morning-edition/2015/12/north-florida-land-trust-buys-largest-land.html (http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/morning-edition/2015/12/north-florida-land-trust-buys-largest-land.html)
That is awesome news.
Fantastic news!
Outstanding. Even 'undevelopable' lands often deserve specific protection.