The historic Indian Cellar property along the Saco River dividing Buxton and Hollis will never be carved into house lots now that a $1 million nature preservation effort has concluded.

Ownership of the large, pristine site, where American Indians once stored food in the cool of a cave in shoreline ledge, transferred last week to the town of Hollis and remains open to the public for recreation.

“Our Conservation Commission will be in charge of that,” Hollis Selectman Stuart Gannett said Monday about the site.

With help from the national conservation organization The Trust for Public Land, the town of Hollis and a group of Buxton and Hollis residents calling themselves the Indian Cellar Property Preservation Committee spearheaded the drive to save the property from a proposed subdivision of several houses.

Barbara Sheahan, a member of the preservation committee, said Indian Cellar is one of the prettiest spots in the county. “I look at it in terms of nature appreciation,” Sheahan said. “I think it’s tremendously important.”

Gannett said plans for the Indian Cellar property call for picnic tables, construction of a small dock, and placing signs identifying trees and plants in addition to grooming a network of trails. “We have a lot of cleaning up to do,” Gannett said.

The nonprofit Trust for Public Land announced last week that it had transferred ownership of its 58-acre site to Hollis. The trust bought the property last year from Maine Woodland Properties Inc.

The trust said Hollis also received at the same time a donation of another 23 acres that abut the property. Rodney Littlefield of Hollis made the donation in memory of his parents, Murial and Percy Harmon.

Wolfe Tone, project manager of the The Trust for Public Land, said Monday the combined 81-acre site would be left in its natural state.

Part of the Salmon Falls area, where fish once migrated up the Saco River to spawning grounds, the cellar was flooded when the Skelton Dam was built downstream in 1948. The dam built to generate power raised the river’s water level 74 feet. The dam tamed the wild flow of the water that once raged through the gorge at Indian Cellar.

Peter Eliot of Buxton, a member of the preservation committee, said Monday the area is used “intensively” for recreation with canoeing, swimming, hiking and fishing. He said the Saco River corridor is seeing increased recreational use.

The Indian Cellar property protects nearly a mile of shorefront along the river. “It makes a really nice stretch,” said Eliot, who plans to help build trails.

Tone said the purchase price was $830,000 from $955,000 raised, leaving a stewardship fund to care for the property.

The preservation project was paid for by the state’s Land for Maine’s Future program, $375,000; the town of Hollis, $250,000 approved by voters; and private donors totaling $350,000, including $150,000 from Poland Spring. The Trust for Public Land, which has an office in Portland, financed the acquisition until the state’s money became available.

“It’s a public-private partnership that really worked,” said John Sheahan of Hollis.

Barbara Sheahan said half of the contributions were from Buxton. “It was a joint effort,” she said that brought the communities together. “We got the job done.”

Indian Cellar, Eliot said, becomes a sister park of Pleasant Point Park across the river in Buxton. If the Indian Cellar property had been developed, Eliot said it would have impacted Buxton’s park.

“People would have looking at houses,” Barbara Sheahan said about the view from the Buxton shore, if Indian Cellar hadn’t been preserved.

In a statement released by the Trust for Public Land , John A. Mattor, chairman of the Hollis Conservation Commission, said, “We want to thank the Land for Maine’s Future program, Poland Spring, all our generous private donors, and the citizens of Hollis for helping us to seize this exceptional conservation opportunity. The 60- acre park on the Buxton side of the gorge, and the pristine condition of the land on the Hollis side, make this project even more remarkable. The public will now have free access to this place forever, as it’s always been.”

Tone praised the local community effort. “It’s a great conservation story about a small Maine town making a statement of what it wants to look like in the future,” Wolfe Tone said.

Motorized vehicles including ATVs are not allowed on the Indian Cellar site. Parking is available at a public lot at the intersection of Alfred Road and Route 202 across from the Salmon Falls Library on the Hollis side of the river.

Cutline (Indian Cellar 1)