{"id":5478,"date":"2026-09-29T22:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T22:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/?p=5478"},"modified":"2026-09-29T23:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T23:37:20","slug":"mervin-raudabaugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/?p=5478","title":{"rendered":"Mervin Raudabaugh"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mervin Raudabaugh is 86 years old and has spent his entire life farming 261 acres in Pennsylvania. When data center developers came knocking with an offer of $60,000 per acre, the total came to $15.7 million.<\/p>\n

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He turned it down.<\/p>\n

Instead, he sold the development rights to a conservation trust for $1.9 million. <\/p>\n

The deal, which closed on December 30, 2025, placed permanent easements on the land that restrict it to agricultural use. <\/p>\n

The farms can still be sold one day, but only for farming. <\/p>\n

No one will ever build on them.<\/p>\n

Raudabaugh was clear about why he walked away from nearly $14 million more. <\/p>\n

“I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he said. <\/p>\n

“It really wasn’t so much the economic end of it. <\/p>\n

I just didn’t want to see these two farms destroyed.”<\/p>\n

All around him, farmland in the region has been disappearing. <\/p>\n

Data centers, warehouses, and housing developments have swallowed property after property. <\/p>\n

Neighbors have taken the money. <\/p>\n

Raudabaugh watched it happen and decided his land wouldn’t be next.<\/p>\n

He gave up $13.8 million so that a piece of Pennsylvania stays exactly the way it is.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t about the economic end of it.<\/p>\n

” At 86, the man has zero use for $15 million and total use for his land he loves being left alone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mervin Raudabaugh is 86 years old and has spent his entire life farming 261 acres in Pennsylvania. When data center developers came knocking with an offer of $60,000 per acre, the total came to $15.7 million. He turned it down. Instead, he sold the development rights to a conservation trust for $1.9 million. The deal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5478"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5483,"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478\/revisions\/5483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storydosee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}