Massive land tract is for sale.
Nearly 135 square miles of Vermont forest, more land than Grand Isle County, will go on sale today. The price: $26 million. Essex Timber Co., a Massachusetts-based group of investors, purchased most of the 86,212 acres in 1999 for $7.5 million when Champion International paper company sold off its land in Vermont.
The state and the Freeman Foundation paid $8.5 million for easements on the land to guarantee that traditional uses — both logging and public access for hunting, fishing and other recreation — would continue.
Those easements will continue to govern the property, so no major changes in land use are expected. The property could be subdivided into several parcels, but is being offered as a single unit. [source:burlington]