The uniform, monotonous wastes of the Earth — the deserts, the Arctic plains, great swamps, and marshes – have a power to cast a spell on the human soul. So it must have been with the Barrens. The spirit which haunts it endows it with more than mere beauty... The spirit of the waste is sinister, yet wistful; it is morose yet induces to melancholy. It is, perhaps, a phase of the Divine, yet it does not invite to worship.—William Marye

• Introduction
• From Fire-Hunting to Mining
• An Aura of Notoriety
• From Trash Dump to Nature Preserve
• Conclusions and Works Cited

On first sight it seems like a very strange place. The soil, lacking in nutrients and moisture, produces gnarled and stunted Post and Blackjack Oaks and a profusion of Virginia Pines and Greenbrier. Rocks from the Earth's deep crust and upper mantle are exposed at the surface, angled in every direction. Blackrat and Hognose snakes slither through the Bluestem and Indian grasses of the prairie savannah. Fringed Gentians, Birds-foot Violets, Blazing Stars, Sandplain Gerardias, and Fameflowers add bright purple and pink hues to the otherwise stark landscape. Streams with pools of copper colored water lie undisturbed except for the dace darting madly along the bottoms. One writer described it as a "2,000 acre hunk of the American West dropped into Maryland" (Mondell). This is Soldiers Delight, the largest and most diverse of the disappearing serpentine barrens on the East Coast and home for over 39 rare, threatened and endangered species. Soldiers Delight is a wild land, a haven for hikers, nature lovers, geologists, kite-flyers, and children, all of whom are fascinated by its distinctiveness. Nearly a century ago, it was described as "a place of all others to catch a boy's fancy…for these stunted black oaks and pea-stick sassafrases were the primeval forest. This land had never been cultivated" (Spencer 141).

Soldiers Delight stands in the midst of a high-density growth area in suburban Baltimore. By the 1960s there was a real sense of urgency to save this rare ecosystem because of rapid commercial and residential development, accompanied by the building of a new interstate highway nearby. For over three decades, local citizens embarked on a crusade to get the area in the State Master Plan, to purchase parcels of land, and to build an educational center on the premises. Christopher Ludwig of the Maryland Natural Heritage Program calls Soldiers Delight "one of the most successful conservation stories in the state" (qtd. in Brandlon 22). Why was it preserved when so much open space in the region vanished? This is an account of how local residents combined their specialized talents, the public character of this land, and Soldiers Delight's own peculiarities (natural and historical) to achieve the preservation of this rare ecosystem.

Next: From Fire-Hunting to Mining

	Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area
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