Campaign Places:
Projects Funded by Our Water, Our Land

Snow Hill Preserve

A strong conservation partnership with Treyburn developer D.R. Bryan and his associates has yielded 1,544 crucial acres preserved in the headwaters of Falls Lake. Through a combination of conservation easements, land donations and bargain sales, Bryan has found conservation to be profitable for his companies. TLC has found Bryan to be an open-minded partner, willing to listen to ideas and then crunch the numbers to determine their feasibility. At Snow Hill, in a series of deals over the course of four years TLC conserved 836 acres with Bryan and his partners, completing a string of eight conservation properties running more than three miles along Snow Hill Road and Vintage Hill Parkway. This assemblage also connects to the protected land around Falls Lake.

The last of those deals, the bargain sale of 177 acres in December 2008, completed the connection of the previous seven deals. Valued at $3.2 million, Bryan sold the property for $700,000 plus transaction costs.

TLC used $756,000 from the Land Opportunity Fund to make the purchase in the time frame necessary for Bryan and his partners. Grants from the NC Clean Water Management Trust Fund for $617,000 and the Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative for $139,000 will replenish the Land Opportunity Fund so it can be used for future conservation projects. This acquisition creates water quality buffers on more than two miles of streams and 36 acres of wetlands, safeguarding the water quality of Falls Lake, the drinking water source for almost a half-million Triangle area residents.

Unlike many of the projects TLC completes which only theoretically prevent some future development, this project literally prevented development. The property had been approved for 150 homes that now will not be built on this sensitive land.

The Snow Hill property is the main portion of the original Snow Hill Farm, which preceded the more well-known Stagville plantation in local settlement. The grave of William Johnston, one of the first settlers of this region, is located here.

It also includes a portion of the old transportation route known as the Indian Trading Path to the Catawba. This path once led southward 500 miles from a trading post near Petersburg, Va., to an area near Augusta, Ga. It was first documented in travelers’ accounts in the 1670s.

Aside from the grave, there are no visible remnants of the Snow Hill Plantation. But the remains of a mid-20th century farmstead – buildings and implements – stand along the trading path amid a grove of stout oaks.