The Franklin-based Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT) recently acquired 27 acres of floodplain protecting another half mile of Little Tennessee River frontage, at the confluence of Coweeta Creek with the river in southern Macon County. This tract is adjacent to 21 acres and a half mile of river that LTLT purchased and preserved in 2003.

This highly visible conservation project, extending a half mile both upstream and downstream from the mouth of Coweeta Creek, establishes a permanent open space and wildlife preserve area along the rapidly developing U.S. 441 corridor. In addition to protecting extensive floodplain lands from inappropriate development, the Coweeta project provides key wetland and river habitat for the scores of migratory bird species which each year follow the Little Tennessee River as a principal north-south flyway through the southern mountains. The site is also of great cultural significance, as it protects the upriver end of the historic Coweeta town site — a Cherokee town from the 14th to the 18th centuries, and one of only two Mississippian mounds sites ever to be excavated by archeologists in Western North Carolina.

The Coweeta project is located only a quarter mile downstream of the 64-acre Tessentee Farm Preserve, which was the Land Trust’s first project in this section of the valley in 1999. Another five miles to the south, LTLT protected a mile of river frontage along this same highway corridor when it acquired a working farm conservation easement on the Spring Ridge Dairy in December of 2004. Besides playing a lead role in the conservation of the Needmore Tract with its 26 miles of river frontage in Macon and Swain counties, to date the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee has conserved an additional five miles of river frontage upstream of the Needmore in 12 separate projects protecting key farmland, floodplain and historic sites.