Harriet Tubman’s Legacy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

Our Impact Our Projects Harriet Tubman’s Legacy on Maryland’s Eastern Shore

The Conservation Fund is sponsoring a rural legacy area honoring Harriet Tubman and is leading the land protection efforts.

More than 100 years after her death, a new chapter of Harriet Tubman’s legacy is unfolding on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The famed conductor of the Underground Railroad, Civil War army nurse and spy, political activist, suffragist and humanitarian is the inspiration for the 28,300-acre Harriet Tubman Rural Legacy Area.

Born on the Eastern Shore, Tubman lived there as a slave for nearly 30 years. Many structures and artifacts from her time have been lost, but the rural landscape of farms, fields, forests and waterways that surrounded her and provided cover as she escaped and led many others to freedom still looks the same today.

Our Role

Through its Rural Legacy Program, the state of Maryland established the Tubman area to protect and conserve the natural, cultural and historic landscape of her remarkable life. The Conservation Fund will serve as the sponsor of the rural legacy area and will lead land protection efforts, working with willing landowners to place conservation easements on properties with natural, cultural and historical significance. The Rural Legacy Program is supported with funding from Maryland’s innovative Program Open Space

Why This Project Matters

The rural legacy area will bolster visitation to this remote area and will augment the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument. The Conservation Fund played an instrumental role in the foundation of these parks, which saw 90,000 visitors in the first year, far exceeding expectations and resulting in a 414 percent increase in tax revenue from spending on recreation. We hope to carry this momentum forward in the coming years as we expand the Harriet Tubman Rural Legacy Area. Preserving this landscape offers an experiential way to tell Tubman’s remarkable story and helps provide a greater understanding of our collective past and events that shaped us as a nation.

“
The Harriet Tubman Rural Legacy Area (RLA) provides Dorchester County landowners the opportunity to sustain economic development of their properties while protecting the last remaining best example of a 19th-century agrarian landscape associated with the life of a national hero, Harriet Tubman. The RLA complements the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park — sites that were also created with essential support from The Conservation Fund.”
Dana Paterra

Park Manager, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park

Learn More

Photo credits (from top of page): EcoPhotography

Project Staff

Bill Crouch
Maryland State Director

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