But his plans didn’t work out the way he intended. Looking over the property’s view of Mason Pond on Wednesday, he recounted that his marriage ended shortly after the purchase, killing the notion of building on the site.
Instead of developing, Bischoff turned to protecting its views. He got to work restoring the fields to their former glory, invited Tullando Farm to graze its cows and eventually built a one-room cabin in 2002. Like the entire street, it’s off the grid.
“We had the opportunity to put power in inexpensively and thank God we didn’t,” he said during a walkabout of the property. “It would have spoiled the whole area.”
Unspoiled land is exactly what Jeanie McIntyre, president of the Upper Valley Land Trust, saw when she first visited the site. With the help of the Orford Conservation Commission, local donations and grant funding, including $92,500 from the New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, the land trust purchased the property for $229,000 in April, and intends to open it to the public.
“One of the things that makes it so ecologically significant is that there is this big block of grassland that is completely surrounded by huge blocks of forest land,” she said during Wednesday’s walkabout. “That’s really unusual to have that combination of things without a lot of roads, and buildings and disturbances.”
The entire property includes 43 acres of grassland, more than 2,000 feet of streams and brooks, and frontage on Mason Pond, the last undeveloped pond in town. About half of the property is open farm fields, while a forested section leads to another tract of conserved land covering Stonehouse Mountain.
While much of the land is fenced in, the land trust hopes to officially open it with a ceremony and hike on Aug. 13, in conjunction with Orford Day.
“This is kind of a first step in trying to preserve this pristine pond and surrounding landscape,” said Harry Pease, chairman of the Orford Conservation Commission.
McIntyre called the conservation effort a “perfect storm” that came together as Bischoff looked for ways to conserve his land and the land trust began searching for properties in the area. The Conservation Commission was invited to partner with them, Pease said, and members readily agreed because of the land’s historic significance.
Small hill farms once dotted the landscape in the southeast corner of Orford. While subsistence farming was the main staple of life in the shadow of Mount Cube, Smarts and Stonehouse mountains, mills and a limestone operation also popped up in the area, according to Carl Schmidt, a member of the conservation commission.
By the 1860s, about 200 people came to call Quinttown home, but that number declined to just three families by 1935, Schmidt wrote in a history provided to the state barn committee. He blames the decrease on the popularity of homesteading in the west, the end of New Hampshire’s “sheep boom” and attraction of mill work to rural men and women.
One of those hill farmers stayed until his death in 1968, though. Billy Brown owned the property Bischoff would eventually acquire. Known to many as both a local legend and hermit, he lived on Mousley Brooks Road alone, only making weekly trips into town for supplies.
“Any of us, the longer we lived up on the road by himself without any close neighbors, would become less agreeable to seeing other people,” said Bischoff, who found a copy of Brown’s diary after purchasing the land.
While Brown’s house is now gone, a shed and barn he built are still standing near the road. The town and Upper Valley Land Trust consider them historically important and hope to stabilize them.
McIntyre said the structures aren’t significant because of the architecture, but because Brown built them himself with what he had available.
The timbers are mostly made out of logs fashioned in a utilitarian manner.
“They represent what was available to him and his ingenuity in putting together something that would work for his farm quickly,” McIntyre said.
Looking toward the future, she said volunteers are also staking out a trail to Mason Pond and hope to connect the property with trails on Stonehouse Mountain. David Bischoff will continue to be attached to the land as its caretaker, and the Tullando cows will be allowed to continue grazing, McIntyre said.
The trust has scheduled an opening day hike and walk to the pond on Aug. 13. People can find event information and directions at uvlt.org/calendar.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.