Rhode Island Buying Jerimoth Hill summit

The Providence Journal reports today (December 6, 2011) that Rhode Island is buying the Jerimoth Hill for $100,000 from Brown University.

The Highpointers Club through Stony Burk and Dave Covill have been working on making the summit more accessible for nearly two decades after neighbor the late Henry Richardson asserting private property access blocked but Dave and Stony worked with him to provide access on a few days out of the year. Richardson’s property was later sold to the Mosby’s who enthusiastically opened access. They sold their property to the state. But the summit itself had been Brown University property through the entire period as it was a “little Mauna Kea” being used by Brown’s astronomy department.

The Providence article notes:

After a five-year effort, the state is set to approve the purchase of about for $100,000 Brown selling 5.5 acres at the hill’s summit owned by Brown University since 1952. That land, when combined with 4.6 acres the state bought three years ago, guarantees public access to the top of the hill and allows the state to move forward with improvements to the area. Under a proposed agreement, which the State Properties Commission is
scheduled to consider on Tuesday, the state will purchase the Brown land for $100,000, in exchange for allowing the university to use a 2,000-squarefoot
portion of the property over a 50-year period. (Currently, the university’s astronomy department has a storage shed and fixtures for portable telescopes, but no permanent observatory at the top of the hill.) “It has been a long, long time coming,” said Lisa Primiano, of the state
Department of Environmental Man agement, which has been coordinating the purchase of the Jerimoth Hill lands. “So, to have it this close to being tied up is really pretty amazing.”

Links:
*Providence Journal Article (in flash and so may move)
*Boston.com article

Stony Burk updating the Highpointers Board of Directors in 2006.