SC buying 435 acres to forever preserve ‘Blue Ridge gem’

Cedar Mountain, in Greenville County, is set to become the state's newest heritage preserve. (Provided/Mac Stone/Naturaland Trust)

COLUMBIA — South Carolinians will have access to a new nature preserve in Greenville County after a panel of lawmakers gave the go-ahead Tuesday to purchase the land.

Located about 20 miles north of the city of Greenville, the 435-acre preserve will be open to the public, according to documents presented to the state’s fiscal oversight board. The state plans to pay just over $1.5 million to Naturaland Trust, which has been buying properties in the area for about four years.

The property includes Cedar Mountain, what Naturaland’s website calls “a stunning Blue Ridge gem, an archetype for what we look for in land conservation.”

The preserve is expected to be turned over to the Department of Natural Resources to officially become a heritage preserve next May, said Mac Stone, executive director of Naturaland Trust.

At that point, it will join 75 properties totaling more than 95,000 acres statewide managed by DNR that can never be developed, according to South Carolina Heritage Trust, a state conservation program that preserves land of both natural and cultural significance.

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“It’s a great little tract of land to build on and tie together a corridor we’ve been working on for a while,” said Raleigh West, director of the state Conservation Bank.

The goal has always been to conserve all of Cedar Mountain, which stands 1,765 feet over the North Saluda River, Stone said.

Animals use the area as a corridor to the nearby watershed. The water is cold enough for trout to live — a rarity in South Carolina’s warm climate. And development could easily pollute nearby Saluda Lake by traveling down the North Saluda River, Stone said.

When land stretching up the mountain came on the market in 2019, the land trust couldn’t afford it. So, the nonprofit bought 40 acres along the North Saluda River at the base of the mountain, known as the Bramlett Bottoms, Stone said.

“‘If we can’t afford the mountaintop property, then let’s try the bottomlands,’” Stone said he was thinking at the time.

After planting hardwoods and restoring the forest along the river, the land trust raised enough money to buy 141 acres on the mountain itself in 2022. Over the following years, the trust kept accumulating adjacent land, culminating in the purchase of a 218-acre property last month.

Before turning the property over to the natural resources department, Naturaland plans to take down a dam on the 218-acre acquisition that cuts off Short Branch Creek, restoring the creek to its former route through the property, Stone said.

Connecting the properties will also help protect the species of plants and animals that call the area home, Stone said. For instance, wild turkeys forage along the river, then fly up to roost on the mountain, meaning losing either part could harm the population, he said.

Tracks left on the mountain also indicate bears, bobcats and deer cross the mountain to get to the nearby river and creeks, according to the land trust .

“The heritage preserve program was set up to be kind of the highest form of protection for unique ecological treasures of South Carolina,” Stone said. “This is protecting a very unique ecosystem there.”

Biologists also spotted a milk snake during a visit to the mountain, marking only the second recorded sighting of the colorful, nonvenomous snake in the state, Stone said.

“There are these assets that we have where we’re not even totally sure what exists on them,” Stone said. “But if we lose them, if they get developed before we can even see them, then we lose that chance, possibly for a generation or even longer.”

The land trust bought four of the five properties on the active market, meaning they could just as easily have gone to developers. In one case, a homebuilder was in talks with the landowner to build houses on the mountain before the landowner decided to conserve the land instead, Stone said.

“Thank God for these landowners that see things the way we do, because not everyone does,” Stone said.

SC planning to preserve 1,000-acre Central Park of Spartanburg

The State Fiscal Accountability Authority also agreed Tuesday to lease nearly about 950 acres of land to Spartanburg County in order to create what will be known as the Central Park of Spartanburg .

The state is set to buy the property, which is located just 5 miles outside downtown Spartanburg, on June 30, moving it one step closer to becoming a major public park. The state will spend $23 million on the land, currently owned by Spartanburg Area Conservancy.

The property includes 1.2 miles of riverfront along Lawsons Fork Creek and connects to several pieces of land that are already protected, creating a 1,200-acre conservation corridor. Unlike Central Park in New York City, the Spartanburg park is expected to remain mostly natural, with the exception of hiking trails, biking routes and picnic areas.

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