Archibald “Bear” Tolley was a famous hunter, rumored to have shot and killed hundreds of bears on his Purgatory Mountain land north of Buchanan.

Thanks to the efforts of a Buchanan couple, Bear Tolley’s stomping ground will forever remain a home for bears and a mountain refuge for its owners.

Ricky and Tracy Boblett worked with the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy to protect more than 400 acres of the rugged mountainside with a conservation agreement signed in October.

The agreement allows the Bobletts to divide the property a limited number of times and build a small number of homes on it. But it protects the scenic view of the property from the Town of Buchanan, Interstate 81, and the Blue Ridge Parkway across the valley by keeping all development on the lower half of the mountain.

Ricky Boblett is a plumber who spends much of his evenings and weekends working on his Purgatory Mountain land, maintaining the roads and keeping the fields clear. “My biggest reason for protecting the land was my father, Wayne Boblett, a great man who loved this mountain,” Boblett explained. “It is a beautiful mountain and will stay that way.”

“Ricky and Tracy really care about their land,” said Blue Ridge Land Conservancy Executive Director David Perry. “Ricky keeps fields bush hogged on the mountainside for wildlife, and he has a small cabin on the upper part of the mountain with a spectacular view.

“This property is visible from all around, so we were really pleased to work with Ricky and Tracy to help them protect their land,” added Perry. “Most people think of Purgatory Mountain as being steep and rocky, which it is, but there’s a lot of buildable land up there that could spoil the view with houses and development.”

Bear Tolley, an Amherst County native, lived most of his life in the 19th century and is said to have died on the mountain in 1901. The rustic cabin that now stands high on the mountain overlooking Buchanan is rumored to be the site of Tolley’s own cabin. He’s buried below in a cemetery in town.

Famous for hunting bears in the mountains for weeks at a time with his dogs, a likeness of him once resided in the now-closed wax museum in Natural Bridge.

Today the property is known as the “Bear Tolley Hunt Club,” a tongue-in-cheek nod to the man who made a legend of himself wrestling bears in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Blue Ridge Land Conservancy has been saving land in Botetourt County and across southwest Virginia for more than two decades. Today the conservancy protects an area the size of Blacksburg and Charlottesville combined— 18,000 acres— in addition to more than 56 miles of rivers and streams. For more information on how to help save scenery, or to learn how to conserve your own rural land, call 985-0000, visit brlcva.org, or e-mail dperry@brlcva.org.