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The template's trust is real, its founding is exactly as the checklist tells it — and it holds nothing in this county; the county's trust is a different trust, and it is named here. ACRES Land Trust was founded on 2 March 1960, when twelve people — Tom and Jane Dustin among them — each pitched in five dollars to form the Allen County Reserves, the ACRES name itself an acronym of that first form (Allen County REServes). Its first preserve, the Edna W. Spurgeon Woodland Reserve in Noble County, followed in 1961; its founders went on to help write Indiana's Nature Preserve Act of 1967. By its own Fall 2026 quarterly it protects more than 8,700 acres across 27 counties in northeast Indiana, southern Michigan and northwest Ohio. St. Joseph County is not among them: the trust's preserve directory, checked whole for this article, seats no preserve in this county, and ACRES' ground is the Fort Wayne region, two counties and a world east of here. The land-trust holder of this county is the Shirley Heinze Land Trust, founded 1981 in the Lake Michigan counties, which protects more than 4,000 acres in Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Starke and Marshall counties on the Land Trust Alliance's directory. Its St. Joseph County holding is Lydick Bog Nature Preserve, west of South Bend: acquired in 2016 (178 acres on the trust's account; the Bicentennial Nature Trust record gives the purchase as 170 acres — printed in conflict), dedicated a state nature preserve in January 2019, and expanded by 93.78 acres in a project celebrated 1 May 2026, bringing the preserve to 271 acres with its trail system extended. On this ground — Osceola and Penn Township — neither trust holds a parcel, and no other land-trust holding stands in the township in any directory reached: the township's wild ground is held by a county parks board and a town, not by any trust. The corridor the checklist imagines, a string of trust preserves, does not exist here; what exists is one bog at the county's west side and a printed negative at its east.
Sources: ACRES Land Trust, organizational record and Fall 2026 Quarterly (founded 2 March 1960; twelve founders at five dollars; Allen County Reserves; first preserve 1961; 8,700 acres; 27 counties), and its preserve directory checked for St. Joseph County — no entry; Land Trust Alliance directory, Shirley Heinze Land Trust (founded 1981; 4,186 acres; counties of operation including St. Joseph); Shirley Heinze Land Trust and Indiana DNR releases on Lydick Bog (acquired 2016; dedicated January 2019; 93.78-acre addition celebrated 1 May 2026; 271 acres total), with the Indiana Bicentennial Nature Trust project record (170-acre purchase) printed in conflict against the trust's 178 acres. Rights basis: published organizational and agency facts; no image pulled.