Journey's End Wilderness Preserve - Northeast Wilderness Trust

Jay, Orleans County, Vermont 342 acres Download Map

A forever-wild jewel on the U.S.-Canada border

The town of Jay, Vermont enjoys a privileged perch in the state’s conservation landscape. Jay State Forest, home to the renowned Jay Peak, sits partially within the town’s limits, and when intrepid hikers start or finish their adventure on the 273-mile Long Trail, they do so in Jay.

The town may soon have another feather in its conservation cap. The prospective Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve, which encompasses more than 300 acres of forever-wild forests and wetlands about a mile south of the Canadian border, would ensure that a crucial piece of a transnational wildlife corridor gains permanent protection from extraction and development while further enriching a vibrant tapestry of tens of thousands of acres of conserved lands.

Boosting Landscape Connectivity for Roving Wildlife

Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve’s name evokes the conclusion of a long, eventful odyssey— appropriate for its proximity to the Long Trail, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States—but the property’s protection also symbolizes progress towards a hopeful conservation future. The parcel abuts other conserved lands totaling more than 30,000 acres and is fewer than 5 miles from Northeast Wilderness Trust’s 2,716-acre Bear’s Nest Wilderness Preserve. It falls within the Staying Connected Initiative’s Northern Greens to Canada wildlife corridor, and Wildlands Network maps Journey’s End as within a core natural area of the Eastern Wildway, a proposed mega-linkage stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian Maritimes.

That Journey’s End would bolster these landscape-level conservation ambitions motivated the land’s current owners to protect it permanently. Ted Vogt and Susan Shea “share a commitment to land conservation in Vermont (and elsewhere),” said Vogt. They recognized early on that their property was located in the Northern Greens to Canada corridor, and that its ecological features, including a headwater stream and ample beech stands, sustain their local wildlife, like black bear. These contextual and ecological considerations led the couple to seek a forever-wild future for the parcel to support the species—and the planet—they revere.

Plentiful Forests and Critical Aquatic Habitat

Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve safeguards a classic Vermont landscape, where mixed hardwood and softwood species mingle in mostly intact forests. Northern Hardwood Forest, the most common natural community in the state, abounds here. Upon ownership passing to Northeast Wilderness Trust, all 342 acres will be off limits to logging and other forms of extraction, and open for on-foot exploration and hunting of abundant prey species.

The property’s older forests will continue their trek towards increased structural complexity, while younger forests will begin their march towards old growth. Familiar tree species like white ash, striped maple, and balsam fir are common throughout Journey’s End, attended by hobblebush in the shrub layer and trout lily, red trillium, and violets underfoot. Ferns are abundant, with Christmas fern, wood fern, and northern lady fern feathering the herbaceous layer. Elsewhere, the property’s species composition shifts towards the Rich Northern Hardwood natural community. Forested seeps in these areas are canvas to wild leeks, blue cohosh, and maidenhair fern.

Complementing the forests of Journey’s End is its named stream, Mountain Brook. 2,100 linear feet of the stream, which is mapped by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources as Important Aquatic Habitat, crosses the property. Along its banks, false hellebore, sensitive fern, and jewelweed repose. The Nature Conservancy designates portions of Journey’s End as above average for freshwater resilience in its Resilient Rivers database, underscoring the property’s contribution to a more adaptable, hospitable future for Vermont’s water resources and the plants and wildlife that depend on them. The Preserve’s topographical variety, which ranges from 1,400 to 2,400 feet above sea level, provides these species with high-elevation habitat as they migrate upslope in response to rising temperatures.

Journey's End Wilderness Preserve at a glance

Size: 342 acres

Location: Jay, Orleans County, Vermont

Context: Intact forests near the northern terminus of the Long Trail add forever-wild acreage to the Northern Greens to Canada wildlife corridor.

Objective: Forever-wild ecological preserve to boost landscape connectivity.

Journey's End Wilderness Preserve needs your support

The Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve needs your support

Will you help Northeast Wilderness Trust continue its growing legacy of wilderness protection in the Northeast?

Your gift to the Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve helps protect rare ecosystems and species.

Together we can ensure a healthier future for Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve and the wildlife that depend on this habitat to survive and thrive. You can help by:

Sending a check made out to Northeast Wilderness Trust with “Journey’s End” written in the memo line
Making a gift online through the donation box on this page.
Giving through a Donor-Advised Fund (indicate “Journey’s End”) at https://newildernesstrust.org/giving
Making a gift of stock or other publicly traded securities. Please contact Nicie Panetta, Vice President of Advancement, at nicie@newildernesstrust.org

Thank you!

Photography: Journey’s End Wilderness Preserve images by Eric Bailey. Wildlife and plant images by Shelby Perry, Paul Willis and David Middleton.