The Central Arizona Land Trust is currently involved in several major projects to protect lands for future generations. These projects are located across Central Arizona and involve both urban and rural lands. Because CALT works with private land owners, most projects are kept confidential while they’re in progress.
Some of Our Current Projects & Recent Successes
Sherman Payne Property
Long time Prescott area resident Sherman Payne recently preserved his Granite Dells homestead through the Central Arizona Land Trust for three reasons:
- it is extremely difficult to keep up with the taxes on land that is not producing an income
- he did not want the old homestead to be developed as in the surrounding areas, and
- there is a great deal of history embedded in the rocks of Granite Dells and he wanted to see it preserved.
In this arrangement with CALT, the Trust for Public Land, and the City of Prescott, each of the four Payne children will retain a future homesite and Sherman and Charline will live out their lives in their home. Without the conservation easement, the children would probably have had to sell the homestead just to pay the inheritance taxes. No that this wonderful land is preserved in perpetuity, the family can plan to enjoy their land for generations to come.
With developments springing up in many areas of Prescott, the Paynes could have sold their property for a sizable amount. According to Sherman, that was not an option; he expresses his decision with clarity, “My roots are here, so that does it!”
The City of Prescott’s Goal to Preserve the Dells
CALT is an active partner with the City of Prescott in their commitment to see significant portions of the Granite Dells area perserved a
s open space. The City, through its open space aquisition program, is working with local land owners to identify suitable property for preservation as open space. The Central Arizona Land Trust has been, and continues to be, a significant partner with the City and local land owners in securing and protecting open space for the generations of Prescott citizens to come.
Thumb Butte
Thumb B
utte is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Prescott area. Threatend by development, in 1989 CALT partnered with the City of Prescott to protect and preserve the view of Thumb Butte as seen from downtown Prescott.
Young’s Farm - The Project That Almost Was
CALT, along with the Trust for Public Land (TPL), and the Young family worked for a number of years to preserve one of the last remaining community farms in the greater Prescott area. Young’s Farm began in 1946 when Elmer Young started farming 80 acres of farmland in Dewey. Fifty plus years later, the Young’s were still farming those 80 acres plus more. Sweet corn, pumpkins, beardless barley and clover hay and a variety of vegetables were the main crops.
Beef and hogs were raised here for their customers’ freezer meat. Young’s Farm was also known for producing the best fresh chickens and the only fresh turkeys in Arizona.
We believed that Young’s Farm was far more valuable to this community as a working farm than another housing development. We believe that the preservation of family farms and agricultural lands for local food production, open space, and wildlife habitat benefits all of us and plays a vital role in safeguarding our rural Arizona heritage.
Unfortuantely, this project was not successful in identifying the funds necessary to save Young’s Farm and it sold for development in 2005. While this was and remains a great loss to the effort to perserve the values embodied by the farm, it also stands as a tremendous lesson that we cannot assume that the similar remaining places will remain untouched. If you’re interested in helping CALT to see that other special places are successfully preserved, please contact us through the Contact Us section of this website using the link in the navigation box above.