Mainspring acquired Bee Knobs in 2020, using funding from a grant awarded by the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund. Located in Graham County, this project combined with King Meadows, conserving a total of 883 acres.
Read about the Bee Knobs project, including the results from a 2015 Biodiversity Conservation Values Assessment that shows almost all of the property classifying as “Above Average” and “Far Above Average” as a climate resilient site, in this Land Steward.
One of the most biologically diverse places in western North Carolina, this property was purchased from a private owner in 2017, with assistance from philanthropists Fred and Alice Stanback and a donation that paid for legal fees and staff costs. In 2020, Mainspring combined the 770 acres with the adjacent Bee Knobs tract and conveyed a conservation easement on the full 884 acres to the State of North Carolina, through a grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund.
Read about the King Meadows project, including the results from a 2015 Biodiversity Conservation Values Assessment, in this Land Steward.
In August 2008, Mainspring purchased over 900 acres encompassing the lower end of Yellow Creek Valley in Graham County. This was the largest, remaining unprotected tract west of the Smokies in North Carolina and is located along the Cheoah River less than 3 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and 5 miles from the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. The land includes over 12 miles of stream frontage, 4.5 miles of National Forest boundary and an extraordinary array of wetland, forestland, rivercane, and open field habitats. Mainspring partnered with the property’s neighbor, the US Forest Service, in a joint forest restoration plan, and in April of 2010 the first prescribed fire crossing private and public boundaries in Western North Carolina was conducted on Yellow Creek, to dramatic and positive results. Mainspring sold the property in 2013 to a private couple, and in 2015 they donated the land to the National Wild Turkey Federation.
Mainspring’s Land Protection Manager, John Culclasure, worked with landowner Venice Lance and her sons to permanently conserve her father, Clyde Garland’s, hard-earned land in Graham County. Through the resulting partnership, almost 300 acres in the Cheoah Mountains will forever be available for timber harvest and agriculture. The property contains a portion of Sawyer Creek, which flows to Fontana Lake, and Appalachian Trail hikers can enjoy the unspoiled beauty of the property has they hike along its northern border in the Nantahala National Forest. Mainspring is grateful to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the Conservation Trust for North Carolina for funding the transaction costs of this project.