CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Monticello has sold its rights to develop key acreage on its neighboring mountain of Montalto to protect the bucolic surroundings of Thomas Jefferson's home for perpetuity.

"Preserving Monticello's views is part of our core mission," Daniel P. Jordan, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, said yesterday. "Nothing is more crucial than the slope of Montalto. It's gratifying to know it will remain pristine in perpetuity."

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is the private, nonprofit corporation that owns Monticello and Montalto.

The foundation made the agreement with the Piedmont Environmental Council to preserve as open space 150 acres on the mountain, which rises 400 feet above Monticello. The deed restriction, known as a conservation easement, strictly limits what development or improvement can take place on that acreage.

Much of the acreage, which is on the north and northeast sides of Montalto, faces Monticello.

The foundation gave up its development rights on the property to the PEC in exchange for $1.5 million, which Monticello will use to reduce the debt incurred for its purchase of 330 acres on Montalto for $15 million in 2004.

Though the foundation has no plans to develop the side of the mountain facing Monticello, the easement will ensure that future boards of directors will not change those plans.

"Though they [Monticello] would never dream of doing it, this protects the land no matter what," said Christine Sanders, the land conservation attorney for the PEC, which is a nonprofit group based in Warrenton. "Our mission is conserving land. So our missions overlapped on this."

"PEC is a kindred spirit," Jordan said. "It was a pleasure to work with them to advance our stewardship."

The PEC has worked with landowners to protect more than 270,000 acres of land in the Piedmont region from development.

Monticello has now placed about 1,400 of the 2,500 acres it owns under protective easements, officials said. In 2000, it placed 215 acres of the Shadwell property -- the site of Jefferson's birthplace -- under a historic-preservation easement with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

In 2004, Monticello placed about 1,060 acres that were once part of Jefferson's Monticello plantation under a conservation easement with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.

Jefferson bought 574 acres on Montalto in 1777, but the property was sold by his daughter Martha in 1832.
Contact Carlos Santos at (434) 295-9542 or csantos@timesdispatch.com.