Throughout our 20^th Anniversary year GVLT's eNews will include highlights from our history.  Here is the big news from our first newsletter published in Spring 1991, approximately a year after GVLT was formed:

Ø       "The Burke family project, along Sourdough Ridge and Peets Hill is progressing.  The City and GVLT are developing a proposal to purchase this traditional sledding area and many citizens are heartened by the news that this heavily used parcel is headed for parkland status."  (In 2008 GVLT worked with the City to purchase the final two acres from the Burke family - permanently protecting the high point of Burke Park.)

Ø       "We salute the vision of Gertrude Baker who is working with GVLT to permanently protect her land with a conservation easement.  At 85, Gertrude still co-teaches a psychology class at MSU and lives alone on her 180 acre parcel of woods and meadow along Trail Creek Road which she shares with a moose, who is so comfortable around the homestead that it once napped leaning up against the cabin wall."  (The Baker property was GVLT's first conservation easement.  GVLT and the Trust for Public Land have since worked with the Schmidt family to conserve another 2055 acres adjacent to the Baker property.  This summer Gallatin National Forest will be constructing a major new public trail starting on the Baker easement and accessing the Frog Rock area of Chestnut Mountain.)

Ø       "Our year-end fund drive raised nearly half of our 1991 budget of $28,000." (GVLT's raised $686,545 in fiscal year 2009)