Footsteps The Laurel Preserve

Native Americans once fished the streams that are now called Buck and Doe runs. Millworkers harnessed the water for gristmills and a steel rolling mill during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. For decades in the 20th century, the King Ranch grazed cattle in lush pastures adjacent to the streams.

The preservation of this area reached a milestone in the 1980s under the leadership of the Brandywine Conservancy when a limited partnership purchased the 5,367-acre Buck & Doe Run Valley Farms property, owned by the King Ranch cattle operation from Texas. In the largest, at that time, conservation project in Pennsylvania, the partnership donated conservation easements to the Conservancy, permanently protecting the natural, scenic and historic resources of the property. The partnership also donated an additional 905 acres to the Conservancy to create the Laurels Preserve.