Mary Jane Dexter property

In 1952 and 1954 William G. Dexter purchased two parcels, totaling 94 acres, comprising an old farm on West Hill Road in North Wolcott. The property passed to Mr. Dexter’s wife, Mary Jane, on his death in 1991. On February 3, 2010, Ms. Dexter donated a conservation easement (CE) on the property to the Northern Rivers Land Trust. She also donated $3,000 to fund the stewardship endowment for her land.

The Dexter property abuts the Zack Woods area, straddling the Hyde Park-Wolcott border, which the Trust for Public Land expects to conserve with federal Forest Legacy funds. The Dexter easement will thus extend southeastwards a protected area beginning with the Green River Reservoir State Park in Hyde Park. About 80 percent of the land comprises soft- and hardwood forest, while the rest consists of upland and roadside fields. The upland field offers broad views of hills eastwards as far as Greensboro.

Ms. Dexter has allowed public access to her property via a perpetual easement granted to the Catamount Trail Association. Annually she has allowed VAST members to operate snowmobiles on a trail partially overlapping with the Catamount trail.

The easement agreement allows the Dexter property to be subdivided in two parcels of approximately 60 and 34 acres. It provides for three two-acre house sites, beginning with the existing farmhouse residence and including a site in the roadside field at whose southern end is an old one-room school house. A third house site allows for a small cottage near the upland field’s southwest corner.