A northern Botetourt County farm located next to land that a brick manufacturer has been considering as a potential site for a shale mine has been put under the largest conservation easement ever recorded in Botetourt County.

And it is now unclear whether the controversial shale mine project will move forward, because General Shale's option to buy the land has expired and no formal agreement on a land purchase exists.

Ray and Faye Hundley finalized their conservation easement in late November on their 855-acre Eagle Rock farm on the headwaters of Sinking Creek east of U.S. 220 North.

The conservation easement is held by the land trust and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and is the largest ever recorded in Botetourt County, said David Perry, project manager with the Western Virginia Land Trust.

Conservation easements put permanent restrictions on land development. In exchange, landowners get state and federal tax credits and deductions.

Owners keep title to the property, but the protective easements apply to all future owners.

Since the Hundleys bought the land in 1952, they've made a home for their family there, grown vegetables, raised cattle and horses, fed the less fortunate in the community and allowed much of the forest and mountain land to remain undisturbed.

"We love nature and wildlife. Since we enjoyed the land, we felt obligated to protect it," Ray Hundley said.

Faye Hundley raised her four children there in good economic times and bad.

"We struggled to keep it [the land]. That's why we want to preserve it," she said.

The land adjacent to the Hundley property is among thousands of acres in northern Botetourt County owned by Jerry Fraley. He had sold General Shale, a brick manufacturer, an option to buy more than 400 acres of land on Anthony Mountain that the company had been testing for shale mining purposes.

General Shale operates a brickmaking factory -- formerly known as Webster Brick -- in Blue Ridge.

Dave McNees, a General Shale spokesman, said Wednesday that an option the company held to buy the land had recently expired and no other formal agreement with Fraley exists.

"There's some good brickmaking material there," McNees said of the land. "I think it's probably still available to us. But there's absolutely nothing in writing right now."

He said General Shale has no immediate plans to pursue a mining operation on the site.

The Hundleys and a number of Botetourt County residents living in the Eagle Rock area had formed a citizens committee called Friends of Anthony Mountain and vowed to lobby county officials to vote against allowing such a mine.

Residents are concerned that truck traffic, noise and dust from the mine will disrupt their tranquil country life, as well as cause environmental damage to the area.

"That ... mine, if it were to go in, would likely impact the water quality of the creek on the Hundleys' property that's just been preserved," Perry said.

The Western Virginia Land Trust and the Mountain Castles Soil and Water Conservation District are also co-holders of a 2004 conservation easement on about three miles of Sinking Creek land downstream from the property General Shale was examining.

It provides additional protection for the sensitive creek bottom, such as limitations on cutting timber and excluding livestock from the stream.

"If it [the shale mine] gets into the process of getting permitted and approved, then I and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation ... will come and make our arguments for protecting that watershed," said Roger Holnback, executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust, regarding the potential mining operation.

Under the easement, the Hundleys can subdivide the land up to five times and build a limited number of additional structures.

"So much of Botetourt County is being eaten up, being developed," Faye Hundley said.

"This way we figured we could see that it was preserved."