Gahagan Property

The Gahagan easement offers excellent protection of a property with natural and historical values. In 1964 Patricia (Pat) deGogorza Gahagan and her husband James bought a 103-acre, largely wooded property on Dog Pond Road in Woodbury. A fish & game club had created a small pond in 1929 by damming the Dog Pond outlet brook. Also significant in Woodbury’s history, a smaller pond in the brook’s southern corner, now silted in, was once the site of a sawmill.

The property passed to Pat on James’ death in 1999. In 2011 Pat, an NRLT trustee at the time, donated a conservation easement to the land trust, protecting 93 acres. It includes the 12-acre pond, a two-acre fen, vernal pools, and orchids and state-listed swamp thistle. Two five-acre homestead sites have been established.

Eighty percent of the property’s features a rich, mixed forest of soft-and hardwoods with steep ledges and rocky outcroppings traversing northeasterly—a well-known prominent ridge through this section of Woodbury. A woods road and trails ramble throughout the forest, and sustainable forestry is permitted.

The easement protects 2,703 feet of frontage along Dog Pond Road and 2,100 feet of frontage along Wheeler Road.

The Woodbury Conservation Commission strongly supported the conservation of this property with particular interest in the fen. It is dominated by the sedge (Carex lasiocarpa) with a large population of lesser purple-fringed orchids (Platanthera psycodes), and at the time about five plants of swamp thistle (Cirsium muticum), a state-listed native thistle.

Pat’s agreement with NRLT guarantees public access to the property with advance permission of the landowner for nature walks, educational studies, scientific research, and other safe, quiet, low-impact activities. Taking note of this important public benefit, the Woodbury Fund contributed half of the $5,000 stewardship fee that NRLT set aside for monitoring the easement in perpetuity in accordance with Land Trust Alliance standards.

Beavers are active in the dam area, and deer, moose, otter, muskrat, fisher, mink, bobcat, black bear, barred owl, great blue heron, osprey, hooded mergansers, American mergansers, ring-necked duck, mallard, Canada geese, wood duck, and black duck have all been observed on the property.

In 2022 Pat created a life estate with her children Sharon Hanlon and Paolo Gahagan, conferring the land and easement to the next generation.