A Farm Mystery Solved – Part 4

Dennis was determined that the vintage photo of Annie Martin's farm get the proper "Then & Now" treatment.

"I can pinpoint exactly where the old photo was taken from," noted Dennis. "It was someone who parked their car on Jeager Rd and stepped over the fence. I have taken a photo from as close as I can get to that spot. 

"You can't really get there, the wetlands has replaced the tiny creek that was there and you would need a 20 foot tall ladder to get the exact photo. In fact, I did take a 6 foot ladder and stand it up at the roadside and climbed up to take my "now" photo. You can correlate many points on the old photo with the 1952 aerial including that point of trees by the left-most cow and the distant tree line."

Here's the photo Dennis took with his ladder.

I couldn’t resist trying to get in on the act myself, although I didn’t bring a ladder to get my version of the “Now” shot. So I ended up balancing my ponderous bulk on a guard rail post.

As you can see, it’s difficult to recreate the photo exactly with all of the underbrush. 

Here’s an aerial view. Dennis and I were shooting from Jaeger Road from where ‘X’ marks the spot. The large transmission tower is circled.

But getting back to Dennis’ commentary.

"Now there remains one mystery,” he observed. "What in the heck is the horizontal white line running in front of the farm everyone thought was a road? It isn't a road. Leavitt Rd is behind the house, as evidenced by the rural electric line you can see running on the back side of the buildings. It seems to have something to do with the fence line.

"So, what happened to the farm? This is a huge story. First of all, the buildings were removed when Leavitt Rd was widened. But the property has a long and hotly contended history since Anna died in 1964.

"She willed the property to the YWCA in perpetuity to be used only for the benefit of women and other humanitarian purposes. Unfortunately, the Y had little money to develop anything, let alone 65 rural acres. Within a few years they began appealing the court to let them sell it. It was fought by everyone, neighbors, other civic organizations, etc. They finally won in 1994 when the court ruled it could be sold to another charitable organization still fulfilling Anna's wish. The land sold to the Church of the North Coast for some $317,000 dollars. The YWCA when belly-up anyway.

"The Church did some things. They built a picnic grounds, a ball field and a scale model western town used at Halloween time. They planned to build a huge sanctuary there, something like 10,000 seats. They didn't. They decided to sell it. Here we go again. This time the citizens formed organized resistance groups to fight it, especially the people in Martin's Run. I spoke to the main organizer a few times. 

"Well, big money won out. The Lighthouse Village Corp (Home Depot, et al) won, because the courts ruled they could make other charitable contributions equal to the present value of Anna's farm.  The land sold for over 3 million. Lighthouse Village donated one million to future projects. Here is their take on it:

http://liberty-development.com/experience/lighthouse-village/

"I asked the citizen's group organizer if Lighthouse Village set aside any land, and how much of Anna's land actually meets her stipulations. She replied, "Not one square foot." By the way, the site of her house is a Starbucks.

"There were about a hundred articles in the Chronicle, and many in the Journal about the situation.

"So, it is an interesting story about that old photo, even without the drama that followed,” concluded Dennis.

I agree. Thanks for solving the mystery, as well as the great story, Dennis!