Celo Community
North Carolina
Hidden in the South Toe River valley of Yancey County, Celo Community is one of the oldest community land trusts in the United States. Arthur Morgan founded it in nineteen thirty-seven, the same year he was chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Morgan had just overseen a massive federal dam-building program that displaced tens of thousands of rural Appalachian families.
Celo was, in part, his answer to that disruption: twelve hundred acres held in common, managed by consensus, where residents lease land rather than own it outright. Industrialist William Regnery provided the funding. The community drew Quakers from the start and remains predominantly Quaker today, though no ideology is required for membership.
About forty families live here now, farming, teaching, and running the Arthur Morgan School. It is quiet proof that cooperative land stewardship works across generations.
