A historic Pulaski County farm with connections to Mary Draper Ingles that stretches for a mile along the New River is among 15 sites marked for protection by the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation.

So are 232 Montgomery County acres, known as Sweet Spring Hollow, that hold plants so rare they're found nowhere in the world outside of four Virginia counties.

Nearly 180 acres at the head of the Bullpasture River Gorge in Highland County are on the list, too.

The Land Conservation Foundation, a state agency, was established in 1969 during Mills Godwin's first gubernatorial administration. The foundation administers a fund fed by the state general fund, the federal government and gifts. Each year, the foundation awards grants that require at least a 50 percent match for the preservation of historic and environmentally significant land, farmland and forests. The fund can also be used to acquire open space and state park land.

This year, 33 proposals competed for funding. The foundation awarded $6.2 million to 15 projects, including the two New River Valley properties and the one in Highland County.

The 313-acre Pulaski County farm on the New River includes the site of the tavern and ferry Mary Draper Ingles ran with her husband, William. It also holds the remains of a bridge destroyed by Confederate troops retreating from the battle of Cloyds Mountain in 1864, the largest conflict in Southwest Virginia during the war. Two future U.S. presidents fought on the Union side: Col. Rutherford B. Hayes and Lt. William McKinley.

The Ingles' ferry operated until after World War II, but its heyday was when it sat at the edge of the Western frontier. The Wilderness Road ran by the Ingles' tavern door. Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson stopped there. So did a stream of settlers pushing the boundaries of European settlement into the heart of the continent.

But Mary Draper Ingles is the famous historic figure most firmly connected to the site. On July 30, 1755, Ingles was captured during a Shawnee Indian raid on Drapers Meadow, a settlement on what is now Virginia Tech's campus.

Ingles and other captives were marched to Shawnee villages along the Ohio River. Ingles escaped, traveling more than 450 miles in about 40 days until she collapsed in a Giles County cornfield.

Ingles' great-great-great-great-grandson Bud Jeffries already put a historic house built by Ingles' son on the opposite riverbank and the 149 acres of farmland that surround it under a conservation easement. Now the rest of the historic Ingles tract would be protected, too.

The state will spend $283,817 to allow the New River Land Trust to secure the easement. The match will come from the farm owners: Mary Ingles Barbour; her husband, Mike Barbour; her brother Andrew Lewis Ingles Jr.; and her cousin Robert Perry Steele.

The land will be open to the public once a year and open for educational visits and research.

Conserving Sweet Spring Hollow will cost $451,900, according to the foundation's estimate. The Land Conservation Fund will provide $225,950 of it. The rest will come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The New River Land Trust plans to purchase an easement on the land owned by Blacksburg Mayor Ron Rordam and his wife, Mary.

"It's going to be about as restrictive an easement as you can have and still have human habitation on the property," said Irvine Wilson, a natural-area protection specialist with the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation. "It's all part of a larger site we've been working on for years. It's an area we'll continue to work on in the future."

The state is so interested in the Sweet Spring Hollow area because it has rare and endangered plants in at least 13 locations. One of those plants, the Cooper's milkvetch, is one of four species found only in Virginia.

"It's the sort of thing you would probably walk right past if you weren't looking for it," Wilson said.

There are other rare plants -- smooth coneflowers and Addison's leatherflowers -- on the property. Conserving wetlands on the site will help protect two rare fish species, the orange-fin madtom and the Roanoke logperch, which live less than a mile downstream.

The fund will also spend $536,200 so the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries can buy 177 Highland County acres which include a stretch of the Bullpasture River that holds endangered mussels and caves with rare species of invertebrates.

Conserving this land will protect what Game and Inland Fisheries calls one of the state's most pristine headwaters systems. The land, adjacent to the Highland Wildlife Management Area, will be open to the public for hunting, fishing, hiking and bird-watching.

The state had just over $6.2 million to spend on land conservation. Requests topped $24 million.

If all 15 approved projects are completed, it will add 11,539 acres of protected land to the state's total.

Gov. Tim Kaine set a goal of conserving 400,000 acres before his term ends in 2010. At the end of last month, the administration listed 155,000 acres protected by easements or acquisition during Kaine's term.