Historical Overview
In the late 1700s, Revolutionay War veteran Thomas Logwood finally received his back wages. The continental congress offered him land, at the rate of 6 cents per acre. The core of this 6,000 acre grant remained in the same family for almost two centuries.Multiple generations of Logwoods raised apples, cattle, and children on the south-facing slopes of their Wheat's Valley property. You can still see the dry stone walls their slaves laid up to stop erosion in the draws, a family cemetary, and the stone windrows created as they laboriously cleared the crop land.
In 1970, the last heirs of this dynasty put the property up for sale. Thomas D. Smedley, a regional planning director, fell in love with the farm that has become Smedley's Mountain Retreat. Knowing the stresses of fast-paced urban life, Mr. Smedley dreamed of providing a refuge from megalopolis, a place for people to see two trees together, gaze upon the surrounding peaks, and listen to the music of the mountain streams.
- As a life-long outdoorsman, Mr. Smedley knows first hand what it takes to create a nature lover's paradise.
- As a former planning director, Mr. Smedley also knows how rare large tracts of open, undeveloped land are becoming. His long-term goal for Smedley's Mountain Retreat is to preserve the land as a peaceful refuge.
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