Chester County Landscapes

Located in the Appalachian Piedmont, Chester County, Pennsylvania is characterized by rolling hills and rich agricultural land. Rain water drains variously to the Buck Run and Doe Run Creeks. the Brandywine River and the White Clay and Red Clay Creeks. Settled in the earliest days of the Colonies by Quakers and Irish immigrants, the county was part of the original land grant to William Penn and is still farmed and maintained by their descendants. A century ago, sportsmen from New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, in search of land for sport, began to assemble parcels of land, establishing their own packs of hounds for fox hunting. Mid-century, The King Ranch acquired land as a way station for grass grazing of cattle prior to sale in New York stockyards; that land became the nucleus of the Laurels Preserve, named for the ubiquitous shrub which blooms in profusion in the spring. Proximity to Philadelphia and Wilmington has increased pressure on the open space and natural resources but the land still retains a unique and precious beauty.