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Beaver Valley land added to First State National Historic Park

skybeing/Flickr

The Pennsylvania Beaver Valley tract is now part of The First State National Historic Park.

Beaver Valley is made up of 254 acres of upland forest, open meadows, and wetlands, as well as a wide variety of wildlife species, some endangered.

The Conservation Fund is donating it all to the National Park Service (NPS), officially adding it to Delaware’s National Park.

The Conservation Fund’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Director Blaine Phillips says the valley is a natural extension to the existing park.

“It's a great addition to the park, but it's also a statement about saving land in the Brandywine Valley," Phillips said. "Y'know it started with a grassroots effort to stop development on this particular property and the community came together and realized that this beautiful woods and farmland needed to be saved.”

The land has already been accessible to the public for several years now.

“Many people might not notice the shift but it’s an important one,” he said.

Development threatened Beaver Valley before the Conservation Fund bought it. Now the land is officially owned by the National Park Service and will remain protected and publicly accessible for hikers, bikers, horseback riders and runners. It also adds another piece of the historic Brandywine Valley to protected lands.

“It’s really part of the landscape that led to the creation of First State National Historical Park in the first place," Phillips said. "It's almost hard to imagine the park without this land.”

This addition pushes the total acreage for this part of the First State National Historic Park from around 1300 acres to over 1500.      

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