Preserving Nature and Promoting Agriculture

Landowners Caroline and Edwin Newhall (“Robin”) Woods had long sought a conservation solution for their property at Tower Hill (Edgartown) that would both provide permanent protection of the native pitch pine habitat and support local agriculture. After years of work, a pair of Conservation Restrictions (CRs) were completed in 2021 to do just that. Thanks to the generosity of the landowners, their 35 acres stretching from Katama Road to Katama Bay, just south of Edgartown Harbor, will forever remain Vineyard open space, an oasis in a rapidly suburbanizing area.

The gift came thirty years after Robin’s parents, Jeanne and Edwin Newhall (“Bob”) Woods, worked with VCS to orchestrate one of the Island’s foundational conservation projects: recording a CR on more than 500 acres of their property in West Tisbury and Chilmark, while simultaneously conveying to the Agricultural Society (at a bargain price, with a new Agricultural Preservation Restriction) the land that would become the site of the new Fairgrounds and Hall. Named in honor of Bob’s mother, Frances, the newly designated Frances Newhall Woods Preserve was at the time the largest CR on an individually owned parcel ever recorded in Massachusetts. Today owned in fee by the Nature Conservancy, and further “belt-and-suspenders” protected by a CR held by VCS, the Woods Preserve arguably constitutes the largest tract of unfragmented habitat on Martha’s Vineyard.

The Woods’ commitment to Island agriculture goes back many generations. Frances was the granddaughter of the founder of the MV Agricultural Society, West Tisbury icon Henry Laurens Whiting (1821 – 1897). One MVAS annual report from those days recounts that Whiting, a famed topographer with the U.S. Geodetic Survey, “saw the possibilities of increasing the agricultural capacity of the Vineyard, having naturally a good soil, and rich in beds of peat, muck, and in the drifting seaweed.”

More than a century and a half later, the Tower Hill CR gift honors that agricultural possibility, reserving a 10-acre portion for Island farming. As part of the plan, Robin and Caroline (the “Grantors”) retain ownership of a 5.63-acre parcel surrounding the existing 600 square foot cottage (built in the 1920s as a bathing camp for Frances), as well as the right to move the structure and build an additional one. The remainder, nearly 20 acres of permanently conserved habitat, has been conveyed to the Athearn family along with the 10-acre agricultural portion, which they will have the right to farm. The CR prohibits retail operations and parking on the farming parcel. VCS will act as the holder, or “Grantee,” of the development restrictions.

Reaching a successful conservation outcome for the Woods’ land was both motivated and complicated by the fact that the entirety of the property is mapped as habitat for rare species, including the spectacular Imperial Moth (Eacles imperialis). Because clearing for agriculture will disturb that habitat, the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act requires conservation “offsets” to mitigate potential impact. For that reason, two separate CRs were necessary: one instrument sets limits on agricultural usage of the farmland, while the other ensures protection of the surrounding pitch pine habitat.

The two-CR solution, in addition to solving a challenging technical problem, demonstrates the donors’ commitment to the family tradition of supporting Island agriculture in a very direct way. While the CR on the 10-acre farmland portion counts as a charitable gift for conservation purposes (and therefore generates tax benefits), the larger CR does not because it was required by the state as offsetting mitigation. We are grateful to Robin and Caroline Woods for continuing their family’s multi-generational generosity, and hope their story inspires others.

Below and top: The 600 sq. ft. “bathing camp” has remained largely unchanged across 100 years (1924 photo courtesy Woods family; modern photo by Brendan O’Neill)