Picture this: Park your car in the lot at the Walter Nature Reserve on Weistertown Rd. Follow the trail up and around to the meadow, then along the spur that connects to the MCP Trail in Murrysville Community Park. That trail will link to one taking you across the top of the Caywood Reserve, crossing Hills Church Road and passing through property owned by Dominion Gas. Follow the trail along the Shagbark right-of-way and into the King Reserve. Crossing Crowfoot Road takes you to the parking lot joining the King Reserve to Potter’s Corner. You have just traveled from the eastern edge of Murrysville to within a stone’s throw of Sardis Road and the Municipal Building without walking the high-traffic roads.
The Westmoreland Conservancy stands poised to make some pretty amazing strides as we enter 2009. We are going public with a key acquisition completing our first green corridor. The Caywood Property has been several years in planning (see below) and has opened wonderful possibilities for us. Included among them: a site-to-site trail proposed cooperatively through Conservancy and Municipal properties along this green corridor.
Along with property acquisition comes responsibility for creating safe trails, maintaining those trails and being good stewards of our properties. There are also many new expenses like surveying costs, subdivision costs, the expenses of creating parking areas as well as signs marking the property boundaries at proper intervals. We need to replenish our General Fund to accomplish these new tasks.
The work force has always been made up of volunteers from within the Conservancy. That’s one of the great things about being an organization with strong community ties. But as we grow, we need our active membership to grow as well. We are preserving the land you love, the land where your families grow and play. We need you to help us do that. To help us reach our goals we are having a FRIEND-AND-FUNDRAISING DRIVE beginning now, January 2009. The simple truth is that we need active members, we need new members, and we need money.
CAYWOOD: A LINK BETWEEN MCP AND KING
By Don Harrison
In the fall of 1995, John Oliver, President of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy called Fred Shirland, Westmoreland Conservancy President, asking if we had any interest in two parcels of land in Murrysville that had been offered to WPC. Patricia Walter of Wilkins Township wanted to gift 29 acres of the family farm on Wiestertown Road as a nature reserve open to the public. Likewise, Marjorie Saco of Bethesda, MD wanted to insure that her 95 acre parcel of land between Murry Woods and the Crowfoot Gun Club was protected from development. We hiked around these properties for a few hours before deciding that we really ought to have an aerial over view. Fortunately, Fred had a friend in Delmont who owned an airplane. Our fly over revealed how undeveloped the land was between Hilty Road on the east and Townsend Park on the west. We noticed too how well the Walter and Saco properties lined up on an east/west axis with lots of open areas in between.
Although Westmoreland Conservancy's stated purpose is to acquire and preserve rural and rustic lands for the public good, some board members questioned the wisdom of shouldering the responsibilities of ownership and maintenance of land freely open to the public. After all, the conservancy had turned over its interest in the Kellman Nature Reserve to the municipality on the premise that it was better equipped to operate a public facility. In the end a motion passed unanimously to accept fee simple title to suitable land.
Walter Nature Reserve was our first and by far the easiest acquisition. Before the Westmoreland Conservancy became involved, William and Patricia Walter had an approved sub-division of their grandparent's farm. All we had to do was accept title to her gift. The Saco acquisition was another story.
Marjorie and her nephew had acquired all of the fractional shares in the farm property dating back several generations. Originally surveyed in 1879 and known as the South farm and later as the King farm, it had escaped subdivision probably because there were too many fractional owners to ever reach an agreement to sell. A title search established that Marjorie and her nephew were the sole owners of the 95 acre parcel. And a new survey showed that with some adjustment the boundary closed. Now the only problem was money. Marjorie felt she couldn't afford to gift her property out right but would sell it to us at a bargain price. We agreed on a sale price of $120,000 for property that was appraised at $240,000. With a grant from DCNR, the financial support of the community and the willingness of Scott Conservancy to be our strawman until our provisional 501(c)(3) status became permanent, we assumed ownership of the King Reserve.
Opportunities to acquire the Tomer, Flinn and McGinnis Reserves shifted attention away from the King/Walter axis for a few years. Acquisition of Potter's Corner comprising three buildable one-acre lots adjacent to the King Reserve on Crowfoot Road, rekindled our interest in the green corridor. As a young woman, Cary Bohl had ridden horse back on the Caywood property. She knew Jane Caywood and was comfortable in discussing our desire to acquire some of her property. Jane owned two parcels: a 35 acre plot containing her house and an adjacent 102 acre parcel located between King on the west and Walter Reserve on the east. Our interest in Caywood intensified with the acquisition of the Cline property for a Municipal Community Park. Suddenly a link up between Townsend Park to the west and Walter Nature Reserve to the east became achievable. We began negotiating with Jane in earnest. Then without warning, she died on April 13, 2005. Seemingly our case had failed before it had begun. But to our delight and surprise Jane had devised us a 34 acre plot from the 102 acre parcel. Now that she no longer needed her house on the 35 acre plot, we had an opportunity to switch it with the devise. This switch would give us a land bridge from MCP to within about 1600 feet of King. Acquisition of eight acres on the western end of the 102 acre parcel would give us access a public road and place us within 700 feet of the King Reserve. The court and the heirs approved the land switch and the heirs agreed to our acquisition of eight acres on the west end of the 102 acre parcel. And the municipality approved a three lot subdivision of the 102 acre parcel. Dominion Gas grave us permission to cross their property. Shagbark Grove Real Estate deeded us a right of way along the northern boundary of lot 10, finally closing the 700 feet gap between MCP and King.
