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NPS FORM 10 -900 -A (8 -86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 15 Captain John S. Pope Farm Orange County, North Carolina 16 OMB Approval No. 1024 -0018 unpastured woodlands, which alone comprised forty -six percent of farmland. 16 Additionally, the production of tobacco, which required much hand labor and was grown on approximately one -half of the farms in Orange County, contributed to the relatively small number of harvested acres. Thus only about twenty percent of farmland was being actively cultivated and harvested in the mid - twentieth century. The historic landscape of the Captain John S. Pope Farm is typical of a mid -sized farm in Cedar Grove Township with field patterns dictated by the type of soil and changing little, if at all, in the early twentieth century and a majority of the land remaining wooded or undeveloped. Farm census records from 1925 indicate that only thirty-nine acres of the ninety -three acres held by Carl M. Pope (twenty acres were part of a non - contiguous parcel) were cultivated with fifteen acres cleared but not tilled and thirty-nine acres being "woods, waste, pasture, etc. "17 By 1935 and 1945, forty -four acres were in cultivation with thirty-nine acres remaining unimproved.18 Much of the unimproved land was located near the spring and its resulting stream, just south of where the farm road turns; this low -lying ground is not suitable for row crops and remained forested. Additionally, fields nearest the house were seasonally used as small garden plots but were used predominantly for the grazing of livestock. The fields at the north and east ends of the property were used to cultivate row crops, including tobacco, corn, and other grains based on the type of soil that dominated each field. The farm census records indicate little change in the number of acres dedicated to each crop and aerial photographs taken by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1938, 1955, 1966, and 1972 show little change to the field and forest pattern of the farm in the twentieth century. While the farm no longer cultivates row crops, the shift from cultivated fields to pasture has minimal visual impact on the landscape. Tobacco remained the prominent cash crop in Orange County through the early years of the twenty -first century. Four generations of the Pope family grew tobacco on the property from the 1870s through 2005. While the farm is no longer viable as a tobacco farm, the land remains in use, its open fields used to pasture -graze meat lambs for sale at local markets and restaurants. The family is proud to have the farm recognized as a Century Farm by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture for its continued agricultural use by a single family and is seeking a conservation easement to ensure its continued agricultural use. 16 Lefler, pg. 231. 17 Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1925 Farm Census Report, Orange County. " Department of Agriculture, Statistics Division. 1935 and 1945 Farm Census Reports, Orange County.