As we roll down the cedar-lined track toward Hackett Point, just south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the roar of our four-seat ATV makes it hard to talk.
At the wheel, Paul Peditto explains over the engine and tire noise what it takes to open this newest Maryland nature preserve to the public.
“I’ve been blessed to know a bunch of people who have had the opportunity to experience this place,” said Peditto, an assistant secretary of natural resources. “The great thing about being a career public land manager is the concept of being able to create that opportunity for everyone else.”
Morning clouds have drifted off, and the bright bay sky has turned the landscape more gold than brown, more silver than gray.
This is the Holly Beach Farm Natural Resources Management Area, a pocket wilderness hidden next to highways and urban centers.
It is a 293-acre thread of land between the Chesapeake and Whitehall Bay, so delicate you might be able to throw a piece of driftwood across its narrowest point.
Maryland bought it for a dollar from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in 2024, culminating a 25-year effort to save the tract from development. Now, the state is rolling out a plan to gently open it to a public hungry for wild, natural places.
The goal is to find balance and to keep people from loving this special place to death.
At its center is Peditto, connected from the beginning to efforts to save the farm.
“This is in my heart and soul,” he said. “That’s the thing that really made it exciting to sit there and draft the ‘choose us’ response to that stewardship request from CBF.”
Holly Beach Farm once stretched across 2,500 acres, a summer playground for the Labrot family. At one point, it was a thoroughbred center, birthplace of champions such as Lady Maryland and Tred Avon.
But time never stops. Now, millions of cars and trucks cross its old footprint on Route 50 every year, to and from the Bay Bridge.
Saving what remains was the vision of the final family owners, Leonie Labrot Gately and her husband, Stack. Peditto became the couple’s friend after helping manage the deer devouring their beloved flowers.
In 2000, the Gatelys asked him over. They rolled a subdivision plan across their 16-foot dining room table — single-family homes on the bayside, a golf course in the middle and townhouses along Whitehall Bay.
“I just kind of stood there and looked at it, and I was like, that’s awful,” Peditto said. “I didn’t know if they wanted my opinion in that moment, but I couldn’t help myself.”
They didn’t want it to happen either. Leonie said the problem was that every few weeks, another developer pitched another plan.
“She said, ‘I’m just tired of having to respond to them.’ So she said, ‘We’re going to donate it. Who should we donate it to?’”
“Who” ended up being the Chesapeake Bay Foundation through a $9 million deal, funded by federal, state and private money.
The nonprofit struggled, though, to meet a requirement of the funds — opening Holly Beach Farm to the public. The farm shares the peninsula with wealthy homeowners. Northrop Grumman operates a plant next door.
It’s a fragile place.
At 22 feet above sea level at its highest point, the land is vulnerable to storms, flooding and erosion. The lane that travels its spine won’t support heavy traffic.
So, the foundation chose the Department of Natural Resources to take over the conservancy established by Leonie Gately.
“I probably know this dirt as well as anybody who’s left in Maryland, and perhaps more importantly, I know what her intention was,” said Peditto, who heads up land resources. “And we’ve got an administration that’s allowing us to point it in that direction, and that’s fun.
“That’s kind of a dream come true.”
Peditto has fished and hunted this land. There’s a photo of him with an enormous largemouth bass caught in the freshwater pond. There’s a 10-point buck mounted at home, killed in nearby woods.
And he’s worked it. When a conservation engineer died while working on a wetlands project, Peditto rented heavy equipment to complete it.
“It still works,” he said as we drove by.
This will never be another Sandy Point State Park, the summer destination across Route 50 that draws 1 million visitors each year.
The public will get to use Holly Beach Farm in smaller numbers. The farm road is gated.
The DNR set up reservation-based hunting zones over the winter for waterfowl, deer, rabbit and squirrel. But a similar system for hikers, bicyclists and sightseers won’t open for a while.
Old farm buildings, including the ramshackle manor house, have to be stabilized or torn down. A damaged dock needs repairs. Erosion control projects are being designed.
Someday, Holly Beach Farm and Sandy Point could be linked by educational trips. Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz wants an electric ferry that would travel under the bridge, around Hackett Point, to the dock on Whitehall Bay.
“This is an original thought, the concept of an electric ferry that would shuttle students from the parking and boat slip areas of Sandy Point and give them an experience,” Peditto said.
Right now, the waters along the preserve are filled with buffleheads and canvasbacks, ruddy ducks and redheads. By summer, boaters will replace waterfowl.
The DNR will allow the long practice of wading ashore at Goose Pond beach to continue, but there’s no date set for opening old farm fields — now devolving into maple and sweet gum forests — to wanderers.
Some people have already discovered them.
Luke McFadden, a Pasadena waterman with 1.7 million followers on TikTok, built a pontoon boat camper, then launched it from Sandy Point and landed at the farm in February.
“He camped on the bayfront shoreline, spent the night and killed a deer the next day,” Peditto said.
A wilderness adventure, 15 minutes from Annapolis, 40 minutes from Baltimore and Washington.
“For us, that’s no harm, no foul. It’s public land. Enjoy it.”
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