152 SIDELINES APRIL 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
e
Sidelines Honor
Conservation –
Mike Rubin Style
By Lauren R. Giannini
M
ike Rubin doesn’t horse around when it comes
to land conservation. To date, he has personally
saved about 4,300 acres from development and
has been instrumental in numerous other land ac-
quisitions for preservation. Dedicated and passionate about his
quest, Mike is the modern version of the knight riding to the res-
cue. His goal, however, is not the princess: it is endangered land.
“I first learned about this – how to save land – in 1997 when I
rode my first horse, started hunting with Potomac and bought my
first farm. This farm had suddenly gone from a productive farm to
being advertised for a McMansion development and it served as
the vehicle for me to learn about preservation and how to save
the farmland,” said Mike, who lives in Boyds, Maryland. “The sec-
ond thing that came up – I’ll never forget – I had been riding for
maybe six months and my neighbor Anne Davies invited me out
for a ride through this tremendous forested area, with all these
trails through it. It was absolutely gorgeous.”
Seeing countryside from the back of a horse tends to make the
landscape even more spectacular. Mike and Anne were riding
through a piece of land near Boyds and Germantown in Mary-
land’s Montgomery County. Germantown, about 25 miles from
Washington, D.C., already boasted a population of 70,000 peo-
ple.
“Anne said to me, ‘You’re not going to believe it, but this is
all going to disappear – they want to build 2,000 houses on this
land.’ I was horrified,” said Mike. “That parcel of 1,850-plus acres,
owned for 30 years by a local gravel company, had been bought
several years previously by a British conglomerate. The gravel
company also owned two railheads so they could ship out the
stone they mined. I forced them to include those two five-acre
railheads and I converted them to small farmettes. I had already
bought a small farm that had been the historic part of this holding
as they were trying to get out from under stringent protections
for historic buildings. I heard a rumor that they wanted to sell the
remainder, so I made a call. I hit them at the right moment and
gave them a contract and they took it. I bought the whole parcel.”
His acquisition required cooperation and help from the Trust for
Public Land and a Maryland State preservation program admin-
istered by Montgomery County. The property constituted about
two-thirds of the landmass of Boyds, which had been fighting a
David-Goliath battle for years to keep it from being exploited for
its minerals or heavy development. It contained the largest forest
left in Montgomery County and several important waterways. It
was also a potential major gateway for a wave of development
into an important part of Montgomery County’s Agricultural Re-
serve. Today, 800 acres comprising the Hoyles Mill Conservation
Mike Rubin and Goldie
at Potomac Hunt, which
rides over open land,
including farms and
acreage which have
been preserved for
rural, agricultural and
equestrian purposes in
Montgomery County.
Photo courtesy of Mike Rubin
