Putting the Land in Trust Great blue herons, purple finches and
quail are at home here, and red tailed hawks soar above the
woods. Sweetwater has a wealth of wildflowers, native herbs,
wild plum trees, blackberries, black raspberries and persimmons.
Along with this abundance, it has something else you can almost
see, if you squint your imagination. It has forever. Sweetwater
will always be essentially what it is now, a mixture of
wilderness, farm land and homesteads. These 480 acres in Wright
County will never be sold for conversion to a treeless plain or
a grid of streets thick with houses. Forever, always and never
are strong words, but Sweetwater's human residents could
forecast its future in 1985 when they created Sweetwater
Community Land Trust, a feat made possible by Ozark Regional
Land Trust, a nonprofit conservation organization. ORLT responds
to requests for assistance from people who want to preserve land
in the Ozark region, which extends beyond what many people think
of as "the Ozarks." The land