Mudville Purchase

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Gift of land will preserve 'Mudville' on the Genesee River
Tucked away along a meandering stretch of the Genesee River, the Genesee Valley Wildlife Management Area is accessible only by dead-end road or by boat.

Other than much-better-known Letchworth State Park, the 771 acres of forests, fallow farm fields, wetlands and wooded hills split by gullies on the Livingston-Allegany county line is the only piece of state-owned land on the entire Genesee River.

But to Gary L. Russell, the land is the hideaway where his family spent weekends when he was a boy — an out-of-the-way place where he and his brothers floated the Genesee on inner tubes, where his mother planted an improbable Christmas tree farm, where his father went deer-hunting every fall.

Back then, the place was known as Mudville, and the Russell family holdings included two miles of frontage on the fascinating Genesee. "The river was always changing. It was a really interesting place," said Russell, who is now 63 years old.

About a decade ago, Russell, having inherited the land from his deceased mother, decided he wanted it preserved as it is — if not wilderness, exactly, then the next best thing. He contacted the Nature Conservancy's central and western New York chapter, which hooked him up with New York state environmental officials. In a series of gifts that ended in 2007, Russell donated the land — worth $750,000 according to the Department of Environmental Conservation — to the state.
Continued: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/art ... esee+River
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