Blue Run Preserve Offers Central Virginia's Rare Blend of Hunting Retreat, Family Legacy, and Long-Term Flexibility
A property once destined to be an open-pit mine is now one of the region's most complete conservation legacy estates — built for a family that wants land, privacy, and options.
Just minutes from James Madison's Montpelier, Somerset Plantation, Woodberry Forest School, and the award-winning Barboursville and Horton Vineyards, a remarkable 136-acre property has returned to market — carrying with it one of Central Virginia's most dramatic conservation stories, and a rare structure that gives its next owner room to grow into it.
This land nearly became something very different. Had local citizens not prevailed in a legal fight that ultimately reached the Supreme Court of Virginia, the rolling fields and hardwood forest here today would instead be an open-pit shale mine — dump trucks rattling past Montpelier's gates by the tens of thousands each year. Local landowners stopped it. What followed was a decade of careful restoration: more than 125 acres placed under a permanent conservation easement, 53 acres reforested as one of the first projects in Virginia's DEQ nutrient trading program, and the scenic Blue Run — a tributary of the state-designated Rapidan and Rappahannock scenic rivers — protected as it winds through the property.
What makes Blue Run Preserve unusual isn't just the story. It's the structure. The 126.75-acre conserved core carries its own defined building envelope, permitting a primary residence and a secondary dwelling — enough to anchor a real family compound, a caretaker's residence, or simply a private retreat with room for guests, without disturbing an acre of protected ground. Beyond that core, four additional buildable lots sit along Old Barboursville Road and Glenbrooke Lane, already subdivided with their own tax parcels.
That combination is what makes this property especially well suited to a buyer thinking generationally. "This is a legacy estate for someone who wants a hunting retreat with family close by," said Angel Evans, land advisor with The Land Group. "You get the privacy and the habitat of over 125 protected acres, a building envelope for a real home, and four additional lots giving you the option to bring family onto the land now — or sell them individually down the road if your plans change. It's built to flex with whoever owns it next."
For a hunting or recreational buyer, the conservation easement isn't a constraint — it's the reason the land performs the way it does. Permanent protection means stable wildlife habitat, no risk of a subdivision rising on the next ridge, and the kind of quiet, uninterrupted timber and stream frontage that takes decades to establish and cannot be recreated once it's gone.
As development pressure continues to rise across Central Virginia, opportunities to acquire land of this scale, history, and ecological standing — with the legal and environmental work already complete — are becoming genuinely rare. "We're looking for a buyer who understands they're stepping into a story, and wants to continue it," Evans said. "Someone who values privacy and permanence enough to want to pass this land to the next generation — and appreciates having options along the way."
This account draws on the original conservation story first documented by Robert Banner, ACRE Investment Management.