'The Rolling Hills Are Pretty Remarkable': The Wide-Open Spaces Of Chester County Are By No Accident
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Chester County is filled with rolling hills and vast farmlands. Its wide-open spaces are by no accident either. In 1989 residents voted overwhelmingly to raise $50 million to preserve green space and stop the sprawl before it changed the place that they loved.
"When you get a chance to drive through Chester County, every turn there's going to be something around the bend," Natural Lands director of communications Kirsten Werner said.
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Now almost 30% of Chester County's land is protected in some way as open space. One of those places is ChesLen Preserve in Newlin Township.
The 1,200 acres of meadows, forest and natural habitat are owned by the non-profit organization Natural Lands.
"Natural Lands is one of the region's oldest and largest land conservation organizations," Werner said. "Our mission is essentially to save and care for open space."
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Chester County is known for its farmland, everything from corn fields to vineyards like Va La Winery.
The county has worked with more than 500 farms to protect more than 40,000 acres of farmland from development.
"It's not just a pretty thing – oh look at the silo and the pretty red barn," Preservation Programs coordinator Judy Thomas said. "Agriculture is a business."
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Thomas says the open spaces have been a boon for Chester County, for its health, its property value and its environment.
"So just for free, all this open space is helping to clean our air," Thomas said. "It's filtering pollutants out of the water. It's storing carbon in the trees."
They hope the county will look like this for generations to come.
"The rolling hills of Chester County are pretty remarkable," Werner said. "The farm fields are often considered and called iconic because we love seeing agriculture here and that's a huge part of the community in Chester County."
