The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, located on the western shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay in Edgewater, Md., recently purchased 575 acres of forests and fields that adjoin its property, a site known as the Contee Farm, for $6.2 million.

The Contee Farm acquisition and the Environmental Research Center’s existing land holdings form a contiguous watershed landscape of 2,650 acres across four miles of fields, forests and wetlands to the Chesapeake Bay. The ecological and natural conservation of the property provides extensive habitats for a diverse array of game and nongame species, including deer, eagles, turkey, geese, waterfowl, forest birds, foxes and myriad amphibians and reptiles.

The mostly forested Contee Farm is the largest area under a Forest Stewardship Plan in central Maryland. It contains numerous important archaeological sites, from Piscataway Indian campsites to the ruins of the colonial Contee plantation, which overlooked the Rhode River.

A wide array of experiments conducted by Environmental Research Center scientists on the farm in collaboration with its former owners, the Kirkpatrick-Howat family, has provided numerous long-term scientific measurements and data.

Upon its purchase of the Contee Farm, the Smithsonian granted a custom conservation easement to the Maryland Environmental Trust in partnership with the Scenic River Land Trust. Under this easement, the staff of the Environmental Research Center will use the property to expand public programs and education as well as to sustain long-term research. Year-round activities will be held at the site, such as educational programs focusing on natural history, land stewardship, cultural history and archaeology.