As the morning mist drifted and rose, sunlight spun the waves with silver. Vast beaches, flanked by steep sand dunes, stretched north and south to the horizon.

Pelicans in check-mark formation passed low over the water; sandpipers scurried at the surf's edge. The sounds were only nature's. And there were no footprints but our own.

As senior editor of Nature Conservancy from 1975 to 1991, I learned about the Conservancy's work mostly through phone-and-file research. But in 1990 my husband and I hiked through Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes. I was entranced. For almost two decades, the Conservancy and its partners have worked to save this 18-mile reach of California coastline covering 18,000 acres. Today, the resulting mosaic of publicly and privately protected lands is a tribute to what the Conservancy has learned over its 50-year history: the protection methods that spell conservation success.

The following pages showcase 25 land preservation projects whose success shaped how the Conservancy works today. Among thousands of efforts, these are some of the stories that inspired the Conservancy, after inevitable trials and errors, to forge ahead and create a legacy of Last Great Places.