11/28/09 - “Cooperation from many local land owners makes the job of preserving and connecting key parcels of open space on Block Island more than a desired goal; it spurs us on to believe that much more is possible.”

— Keith Lang, Executive Director of the Champlin Foundations, August 1989

This Friday, at 4 p.m., at the 1661 Inn, the local chapter of The Nature Conservancy — you know the team: Charlotte, Chris, Scott and Adrian — will be “hosting an Open House to give thanks to the Island community for supporting [their] program and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Island’s Greenway trail system.”

Twentieth anniversary? Can that be true? What happened in 1989 to mark it as a beginning? Isn’t it true that by then the Maze had already been welcoming walkers for nearly three decades, that wonderful complex of trails abutting Clay Head, conceived, owned and maintained by the Lapham family? And long before that, once the Manissean Indians and the trees were gone, islanders who wanted to get from here to there, simply made their way across open pastures. Just ask Martha Ball or Merrill Slate how natural it felt to go “cross lots.” Edie Blane remembers that even in the pitch darkness of a winter night ones feet could follow the well-worn cow paths.

So what happened 20 years ago? Well, by then most open space, public or private, had been taken over by “coastal shrub.” Coastal shrub? That’s botanical shorthand for the impenetrable tangle of bittersweet and poison ivy, wild rose, bayberry, beach plumb, shad, and choke cherry that thrives today where once sheep and cattle calmly grazed. And by 1989 the summer housing boom was already decades old, having laid its heavy hand over the pastoral landscape, east and west, north and south. “No Trespassing” and “Private Road” signs were appearing like toadstools.

Reacting to that creeping suburbanization, the island’s vigorous conservation movement took shape. In the early 1970s, Capt. Rob Lewis led the fight to save Rodman’s Hollow from development. In the process he founded the Block Island Conservancy, which by 1989 was chaired by the resourceful Robert Ellis Smith. The homegrown conservation ethic prompted the national Nature Conservancy, (TNC), to focus on the island.

The conservancy’s attention was enhanced by TNC’s new state director, Keith Lang. Summer resident since early childhood, Lang had recently completed his duties with Sen. John Chafee and was familiar with the levers of government. Perhaps more importantly for the future of the Greenway, Lang had spent his junior year of college in England, where he had been impressed by the web of walking trails that covered that much larger island. Equally key, it was about this time that Captain Lewis’ son, Keith Lewis, all but single-handedly dragooned the Providence Legislature into accepting the imaginative concept of a Land Trust — a heroic example of lobbying in the face of near hysterical opposition by up-state realtors appalled by the idea of adding a three-percent tax to property sales. The sole exceptions, we are proud to note, were the island’s own realtors.

In 1987, the newly formed Land Trust made its first major purchase, forestalling a large subdivision in the middle of the island. Forging a combination of easements and fee simple, the trust purchased a major interest in the 47-acre Turnip Farm lying between Beacon Hill and Old Mill Roads. Burt King, who had inherited the property and with it an onerous tax burden, had been considering subdivision. As a consequence of the deal crafted by the Land Trust, his historic house and barn now sit alone in a sea of open space. The Turnip Farm abuts the Nathan Mott Park, which includes the Enchanted Forest.

So now here were two large pieces of open space located in the lower cusp of the island, the Turnip Farm/Mott Park complex and the Rodman’s Hollow preserve, to which had been added some 76 acres surrounding the road to Black Rock. This valuable access to the sea, purchased from Nat Greenberg, had been secured several years earlier through a series of government grants arranged by TNC.

The question then became, how to link these two large open space holdings to give them the sort of weight in the southern part of the island that the Maze had in the north and encourage access by the public. By this time, however, the coffers for further land purchase had been all but exhausted. Mindful of the English countryside, Lang turned to the idea of a walking trail to link the two holdings. He found two like-minded owners with land on Old Mill Road and two more sympathetic abutters willing to donate easements, and with some finagling of lots — a gift here, a swap there — a right of way was pieced together between the two large parcels of open space. Gene Hall, who with his tractor and powerful rotary deck would later brush-whack and then maintain at a discounted rate the majority of the future Greenway trails, forged a way through the coastal shrub. Lang credits Hall with the imaginative way the trail snakes over the land. “All we would tell Gene was to start here and finish there.” With the promise of a last link between Beacon Hill Road and the Turnip Farm that would fall into place a year later, it now became possible to walk from the center of the island to the sea at Black Rock. The year was 1989. It was a start.

Today, as the Greenway trail map shows, the web of trails now encompasses the entire island. In the north, one can walk all the way from Old Harbor up Crescent Beach and pick up the Clay Head trail by Pots and Kettles and continue on to Settler’s Rock and on to Sandy Point. With the addition of the Hodge Property and a new trail that leads directly from Corn Neck Road to the Maze, one can cross the island east to west, from Sound to Ocean. And in the south one can leave New Harbor on foot and reach the Atlantic Ocean at Black Rock. West to East, one can start at the Dickens trail, and make it all the way east to Payne Road above Old Harbor. For a community as broadly settled as Block Island, the Greenway, Lang notes, is an extraordinary accomplishment. Not only has it taken the cooperation of many homeowners, there is a group of volunteers known as Adrian’s Army. Adrian, of course, is Adrian Mitchell, who retired some years ago as the town’s road supervisor and now supervises maintenance of the 28 miles of Greenway trails. There are many sections that Gene Hall cannot navigate with his tractor. These are handled by the dozen or so volunteers who each Wednesday morning gather at the airport diner for coffee and to be given their assignments for the morning from Adrian. We hesitate to name them, for fear of missing one. They know who they are and we salute them.

Another sort of volunteerism has come from Don and Dorothy McCluskey. Several years ago, armed with a GPS device. Don walked every foot of the Greenway trails, mapping them exactly to produce the map on page 13. And Dorothy, for years a Planning Board member, has been a tireless advocate — not always successfully, but that’s another story — of adding to the Greenway system if she saw the opportunity when a major subdivision was being considered.

Finally, it is heartening to know that the Greenway’s present and future is well cared for by the staff of The Nature Conservancy’s office here on High Street. All one needs to know about it is contained in a slim and elegant illustrated volume “On This Island, the Block Island Trail and Nature Guide,” authored by Keith Lang and Scott Comings. It costs $15.99, and if readers of this article are already wishing that they could have contributed their bit to the Greenway, buying the guide is the way to do it. All the proceeds are dedicated to the maintenance of the trails. The book can be bought at Island Bound and other outlets on the island as well as at The Nature Conservancy office on High Street, where visitors are always welcome, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.