Culleton helps Lee greenway

Dale Culleton

A strategic tract along the Housatonic River in South Lee was protected in May by Dale Culleton of Great Barrington.

Culleton, who originally purchased the Meadow Street tract for investment purposes, said he quickly decided to protect the land along the river.

"I wanted to help protect a Housatonic greenway," Culleton said. "There's a beautiful gravelly esker near the river, and at first blush, it seemed easy and obvious to built out there, but it would have destroyed the integrity of the river corridor."

Apart from the esker 3/4 a wooded gravel ridgeline created by subglacial streams 3/4 the property includes a variety of habitat, including fields, floodplain forest, a pond and portions of an old river oxbow.

The tract abuts land protected as part of Beartown State Forest, and is close by other land protected by the Council, the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Department of Food & Agriculture's APR Program.