Trees in Slidedown Valley in Sandy Bay Township display vibrant fall colors in this undated photo. This area is included in the land in northern Somerset County purchased by The Conservation Fund. Copyright Jerry Monkman/Photo courtesy of The Conservation Fund

A vast area of forest in northern Somerset and Franklin counties has been purchased by a national conservation group that says it plans to continue a long history of access to the land for recreation and business.

The Conservation Fund closed on its purchase of 44,639 acres near the Canadian border for about $44.4 million on Oct. 15, according to Tom Duffus, vice president and Northeast representative for the Virginia-headquartered national conservation nonprofit.

“For generations, the Hilton Family Forest has been important to people on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border as a source of jobs, economic vitality, recreation and stability,” the nonprofit said in a news release. “The Conservation Fund purchased this property … to ensure it continues to provide for the region and avoid possible conversion, subdivision and development of the forest.”

About 38,000 acres of the land, sold by Hilton Timberlands LLC, is in Sandy Bay and Bald Mountain townships in Somerset County’s unorganized territory, north of Jackman and to the east and west of U.S. Route 201.

The rest of the land purchased, about 3,100 acres, is in northern Franklin County, near the Canadian border. The Conservation Fund calculated its 44,000-acre total based on its own land analysis, Duffus said.

Under the land’s previous family ownership for about seven decades, people in the nearby communities of Jackman and Moose River have enjoyed several uses of the land, said Duffus, who is based at The Conservation Fund’s office in Freeport.

The area includes four mountains, 10 commercial maple sugar operations, hiking trails, snowmobile and ATV trails and many acres of working forest, Duffus said. It also is home to multiple rare plant and animal species, including the golden eagle and peregrine falcon, and the headwaters of the South Branch of the Penobscot River.

“The family were amazing stewards of the land,” Duffus said in a recent interview. “And everyone was used to that. So, when you have a land transaction, it’s like, ‘Oh my god, the world is going to come to (an) end.”

“And that’s not going to happen: The world is not going to come to an end. We’re going to keep things the same.”

The conservation group, which says it has conserved about 500,000 acres of land in Maine and a total of 9 million acres in all 50 states, became interested in the Hilton Family Forest when it went up for auction. Duffus said it appeared to be a competitive sale, though bids were closed, so it is not certain that The Conservation Fund was the highest bidder.

“We understand that there were entities, not based in Maine, sort of far-flung timber investors, and others, interested in the property,” he said.

Though ownership of the Hilton Family Forest has been stable for the last 70 years, changes in land ownership have affected many Maine communities, Duffus said. Approximately 94% of Maine’s forest land is privately owned, according to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Much of the northern forest was owned by paper companies for more than a century, and as that industry has changed, so has land ownership, Duffus said. The paper companies began to sell large amounts of their land in the 1990s, and since then there has been frequent turnover.

“That’s really disruptive for communities, for the industries — like recreation, forest management, maple sugar — that rely on private working forest in Maine,” Duffus said.

Trees on Slidedown Mountain display fall colors in this undated photo. The mountain is included in the land in northern Somerset County purchased by The Conservation Fund. Copyright Jerry Monkman/Photo courtesy of The Conservation Fund

The Conservation Fund aims to bring stability to areas by buying and managing lands for a few years and then turning them over to a private partner that will continue to conserve the lands, allowing the nonprofit to recoup its capital and move on to other projects, Duffus said.

That is the end goal for this property, he said, but the organization is first working to learn more about the community’s use of the land. In the meantime, the organization plans to actively manage it for various uses.

“The Hilton Land is a valued resource for the Jackman Community,” Jackman Town Manager Kirstie Hale said in a statement. “With The Conservation Fund assuring us these lands will remain a working and open forest, I am appreciative of their efforts to keep them a part of our lives and livelihoods.”

Somerset County’s Board of Commissioners heard news of the transaction from the Registry of Deeds office manager at a meeting last week, and some were concerned that the sale would mean a loss in tax revenue.

But Duffus noted that The Conservation Fund does pay property taxes across the country, even though it is a nonprofit organization that could claim an exemption.

The portion in Somerset County had an assessed value of about $6.4 million in 2024, according to Maine Revenue Services, the state agency that assesses and collects property taxes in Maine’s unorganized territories. That valuation came with a property tax bill of just under $49,000, tax records show.

The portion in Franklin County was valued at $1.03 million and assessed $8,400 in property taxes in 2024, according to tax records.

Elsewhere in Maine, The Conservation Fund in recent years has conserved land through two partnerships with the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Maine Woods Initiative: the 27,000-acre Pleasant River Headwaters Forest and the 29,000-acre Barnard Forest, both in Piscataquis County.

The organization also has worked to conserve the 15,000-acre Chadbourne Tree Farm near Bethel and hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Downeast Maine. In 2016, through a partnership with the tech giant Apple, The Conservation Fund donated a 32,000-acre conservation easement in Aroostook County’s Reed Forest to the Forest Society of Maine.

“We’ve been real busy,” Duffus said.