Emily “Paddy” Vanderbilt Wade purchased 4,000 acres of the Greenwood Plantation from the Whitney family for $22 million. Located near Thomasville, Georgia, this quail-hunting mecca features 1,200 acres of carefully managed old-growth forest known as the Big Woods. Wade owns nearby Arcadia Plantation, which has a 200-acre stand of old-growth forest known as the Wade Tract Preserve. The Greenwood Research Foundation, a nonprofit set up by Wade and her family to purchase and manage Greenwood, will chart a similar course with the Big Woods. Originally developed by one of the area’s earliest settlers, Greenwood was acquired by the Whitneys in 1899. Keeping the land intact was of the utmost importance to the Whitneys, who sold the property in order to focus on human rights and peace efforts. “There’s nowhere else like Thomasville in the world. There’s no other large mass of contiguous plantations of like-minded philanthropists and conservationists who own land in the common good for the benefit of wildlife propagation,” says listing broker Jon Kohler of Jon Kohler & Associates.
Read more about this 2015 Land Report Conservation Deal of the Year in the Spring issue of The Land Report.