The Land Remembers

A reflection on the history buried in Piedmont soil

and why protecting it matters.

July 2026

Stand in the right spot in the Piedmont and turn back the dial of time. You’d witness the turning points of a nation.

Maybe it’s the hush that falls over an old battle line. Maybe it’s the cool of woods that once sheltered people moving quietly toward freedom. The land doesn’t announce these things, but it holds them all the same.

Our nation is marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a moment to look back at how far we’ve come. But long before 1776, and long before any of us were here, the Piedmont was already helping to shape the story of this country.

This land has seen movement and conflict, cooperation and change. And it still carries those stories today.

That story doesn’t begin in 1776. For thousands of years, this was the homeland of Indigenous peoples, among them the Saura and the Keyauwee, who lived, farmed, and traveled across the Piedmont long before it had that name. Their presence here isn’t only a matter of the past: related Siouan communities, including the state-recognized Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in Alamance County, remain part of this region today. Any honest telling of this land’s history has to begin with them.

At Piedmont Land Conservancy, our work is about protecting land for current and future generations. But it’s also about remembering what these places have witnessed, and why they matter.

When we protect land, we’re protecting more than open space. We’re protecting the very ground where that history happened.

Where History is Still Visible

Historic Bethania is one of those places. As one of the earliest Moravian settlements in the Wachovia tract, it reflects the deep roots of our region. Through years of partnership with the Town of Bethania and the State of North Carolina, PLC helped preserve 193 acres of this National Historic Landmark, so its story stays visible in everyday life, instead of being built over.

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park is another. Many historians point to this battle as a turning point in the American Revolution. Over many years in the early 2000s, PLC partnered with the Guilford Battleground Company and the U.S. Department of the Interior to help protect many parcels of land that once held one of the three battle lines. Stand there today and you can still feel that history under your feet.

In late 2025, we completed a conservation easement at Hollyview Farm, preserving farmland once owned by Chang and Eng Bunker, America’s most famous conjoined twins. (You can read more about that story here.)

In June of 2014, PLC protected 18 acres of land at Alamance Battlefield, where in 1771, local farmers took a stand against a royal militia (read more here). In August of 2016, PLC protected 14 acres including the legendary Faith Rock (learn the story of Faith Rock here). Both Alamance Battlefield and Faith Rock played key roles during the Revolutionary War.

Ridges Mountain, now over 500 acres of protected land, served as an important route for Native American travel, as did lands we added to Hanging Rock State Park. Each of these places holds a story that would be far harder to tell, or to feel, if the landscape around it were lost.

The Woods that Hold the Most

Now we’re working to protect what may be one of the most historically significant landscapes in our entire region: Guilford Woods.

Its story runs deep, and it belongs to many people. For hundreds of years, it was home to the Saura and Keyawee peoples. Quakers settled nearby as early as 1752. These woods saw soldiers, cannons and more in the Battle of New Garden, a critical series of skirmishes that influenced the outcome at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse later that same day. Freedom seekers moved through them along one of the earliest documented routes of the Underground Railroad. And during the Civil War, the woods became a refuge, for enslaved people and for Quakers alike, seeking to avoid the fighting.

One landscape. Centuries of lives passing through it. It’s the kind of place that reminds you how much a stretch of trees can carry.

Learn more about Saving Guilford Woods here.

Protecting the places that brought us here

It’s easy to focus on how PLC is shaping a better future for our region, and we’re proud of that work. But these lands are far older than any of us, and they’ve seen a great deal. Protecting our future means taking care of the places that brought us here in the first place.

The pace of development today is faster than these landscapes have ever known, and that’s what makes our work urgent. Because of your support, we’re able to move thoughtfully and decisively to protect the places that matter most, before they’re lost for good.

Thank you for standing with us, and for making this work possible. We are grateful for your partnership, and proud of what we’re protecting together.