Race to preserve land between Hyundai's GA site and Fort Stewart elicits echos from past

In December 1864, Elizabeth Smith became an unwitting footnote in one of the most compelling – and for most Georgians, contemptable – chapters of the American Civil War .

With her husband, Capt. Albert Smith, serving the Confederate Army at Fort McAllister near Savannah, it was Elizabeth who was approached by Union soldiers on the couple’s 400-acre Bryan County plantation.

The troops, part of the 15th U.S. Army Corps engaged in Gen. William Sherman ’s destructive March to the Sea , offered a deal.

“They said anything that could be put in the house would be spared, and the rest would be burned,” said the Smiths’ great-great-granddaughter, Judy Mingledorff, who now shares the same home with her husband, McRay Caudell. “So, she gathered food, children and animals, and sure enough, they left the house alone but burned all the outbuildings.”

That included three structures that housed as many as 17 slaves, according to a description of the site by the National Register of Historic Places .

In ensuing years, the property known as Glen Echo would grow to about 2,000 acres. Mingledorff, the latest descendent in a chain of ownership initiated by a land grant from British King George III on New Year’s Day in 1771, has lived there since inheriting the property in 2018.

She and Caudell now harvest pine trees, raise horses and eventually plan to add cattle where her great-great-grandfather milled and grew corn, along with sugar cane and rice in the lower, marshy areas of the plantation.

‘Everything I intend on doing’

Today, 160 years after the Union Army’s visit, Glen Echo and the rural landscape around it face a more modern invader of sorts.

Just across Mill Creek from the historic two-story house but obscured by lush forest, construction continues at the sprawling 2,500-acre construction site of Hyundai Motor Company’s $7.6 billion electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility .

And it’s not just residents like Mingledorff who are bracing for the onslaught of development projected to follow the South Korean automaker to the Ellabell area and beyond.

The U.S. Department of Defense – in partnership with state and federal agencies as well as private organizations – is on the offensive to preserve increasingly valuable land between the Hyundai operation and Fort Stewart , which at 280,000 acres is the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River.

With Hyundai’s projected workforce of 8,500 and thousands more at supplier companies, areas near the site are expected to be prime targets for communities of newly built homes.

DOD’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration program (REPI) aims to limit that growth near Fort Stewart.

“If you were to get a bunch of development, residential development, real high density and other types, that could impact how the Army trains and when they train, even within their own property,” explained the Georgia-Alabama Land Trust’s Hal Robinson, who serves as REPI’s program director and director of legal affairs.

So far, that program has protected about 3,000 acres from development northeast of Fort Stewart and southwest of the Hyundai site. The biggest chunk of that land is on the Glen Echo property.

Those 1,100 acres – like other REPI-protected land – are covered by a conservation easement.

“(Property owners) generally are going to give up their development rights, but we're fine with them still building a house or even two, and anything kind of that typically goes with a residential dwelling (including) barns, sheds, those types of things,” Robinson added. “It's just really giving up those high-density development options so they couldn't, you know, put in 10 houses, 20 houses, turning into a subdivision.”

The protected Glen Echo land includes a handful of 5-acre plots where homes could be built, Mingledorff said.

Meanwhile, in the areas where Mingledorff and Caudell harvest trees, they’re required to plant new ones – or another crop.

The arrangement works just fine for Mingledorff.

“It lets me do everything I intend on doing,” she explained. “We’re conserving the property, keeping it this way, because it's been this way – other than probably a few minor details – since my family's been here in 1771.”

‘All of a sudden, something happens’

However, conservation easements come with a catch. Permanently prohibiting development on land typically lessens its value. That’s why, in exchange for signing off on the easements, property owners are paid an amount equal to the decrease in value on the newly appraised section.

“It's a good way for landowners to get some financial benefit from their property for valuable (development) rights that they had,” said Robinson. “Whether they were really planning to use them or not, they could, and that's the key.”

In all, about 50,000 acres surrounding Fort Stewart have been protected – roughly 35,000 acres through easements, with the balance either owned by the Georgia-Alabama Land Trust or government entities.

The Ellabell area wasn’t necessarily a REPI priority, until plans emerged for the Hyundai mega-site.

“All of a sudden, something happens in a particular area (and) that's where the more imminent threat is for incompatible land-use switch,” Robinson noted. “(Hyundai) certainly presents that type of a challenge. So yes, in the past several years, we definitely have been focusing on that kind of northeast side of Fort Stewart. Fortunately, we've made some really good strides in that area.”

That includes the 1,100 acres at Glen Echo.

‘As much like this as possible’

On a cool August afternoon, Mingledorff, trailed by her dogs, Dutton and LJ, and a black cat named Echo, walks with two visitors down a long stretch of worn asphalt that until the 1970s was part of Georgia Route 204 but now is behind the property's gate.

The still-visible double yellow line is the only clue that a busy public road once cut through this section of Glen Echo, shaded by centuries-old live oaks that had been hidden from view for decades.

“We started just pushing everything back, all the overgrowth and we just started finding all these big oak trees,” Mingledorff recalled, adding that the last family member to live on the property died in 1987.

The clearing also revealed a dilapidated house that was subsequently razed.

But the structure’s fireplace was spared and became the centerpiece of a pavilion constructed from pine that had been harvested on the property. The farm has hosted a wedding, and Mingledorff expects other events to follow.

On this day, though, if not for pile drivers keeping a metronomic rhythm at the Hyundai construction site and traffic on the rerouted Georgia 204, it’s easy to imagine the Glen Echo of Elizabeth Smith’s time.

“We want it to stay as much like this as possible, for as long as possible,” Mingledorff said. “The easement is perpetual. So it'll continue with the property after we die, and, you know, the next generation and the next generation.”

John Deem covers climate change and the environment in coastal Georgia. He can be reached at 912-652-0213 or jdeem@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Race to preserve land between Hyundai's GA site and Fort Stewart elicits echos from past