End of the Herford Ranch

In the late 40's Mr Lloyd came to this community, and bought up a lot of land. He started raising Herford cattle He had a fairly big operation. As time passed he died. The cattle were sold. The buildings sat empty for a lot of years. After his wife died the kids started selling off the land. All houses now. The main house, and a few acres was all that was left. This year the remaining land was sold. The house was torn down, and the land leveled. Today I mowed the remaining property. No one would ever know what went on here 65 or so years ago. I guess you can call it progress, but not sure. Probably all farming communities have that happening now. Stan

Same thing here, but at least some areas of the housing are not dense, it's evolved in the last 40 years. One thing that in this plateau with its terrain, its not all that desirable, some nice areas to build, many not so nice and it will cost you. I was amazed at the 30' of shale that was excavated out for a TSC store, they paid 1.9M for the lot too! Its fun to look at the aerial photos of 1952, things are quite different today.

that aint progress in my book either ,,. we had a lot better country of people that thought rite back in those days

Everyone I know that lives in a house the land its on was cut off of a larger piece of
real estate at some point in time as the population increases takes more pieces of land and so more gets divided.

I remember when I was a kid,there was a big dairy just south of Jackson Michigan on 127. A bunch of Harvestors,a huge bunker,big glass front milking parlor. I was by there last week. There's corn growing,but where the buildings were,all there is,is a falling down house and some trees growing up. You'd never guess in a million years that there was ever a place the size that there had been there.

is this the same man who developed hereford hogs to match his cattle? They are getting very popular here in SW florida.

Always sad to see those once thriving farms come to an end. Just a reminder that time continually marches on.

This guy died in the late 50's. Stan

Yes it happens other places. When I was a kid there was a 5000 acre farm just north of my farm. In the 80s the guy went broke and the bank sod the land to investors. Now there are $250K houses all with a 5 acre "ranch". The sad thing is that a lot of the progress covers up some of the best farm land. Land that has little use other than holding the world together remains unproductive.

North of Dallas in the Frisco/Allen/Mckinney area they are covering a lot of good farm land with concrete and Mcmansion sprawl.

In this area they're in the bad habit of taking an 80 or 60 or whatever rectangle with a house and they sell the house and an acre
or two seperate from the land. The house is almost always near the road and the land ends up with a horseshoe shape on the road
end. Then if someone wants to build on the land the view from their front yard will be the back yard of the original house.

Yes that happens everywhere.

A picture of what use to be my grandfathers dairy farm up until about 1943.

My folks never owned a farm, we were just tenant farmers. The dairy farm where I lived most of my growing up years is now a public golf course. I played it few times many years ago and had a lot more fun walking the fairways and reminiscing about the stuff I did on that ground many years ago, than I did hitting the ball.

Tom in TN
Formerly outside of Kent, Ohio

Same thing happened in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver. In my youth it was rated in the top 5 of agriculture growing areas in the world. There are still some productive farms there - the rest is subdivisions -DUMB

Back when "Cotton was King" this place was heavily populated. Cotton demand died off and so did the area. Lots of old barns, houses, cisterns, fence rows on both sides where an old dirt road used to be, cotton working machines and implements still sitting around rusting away.....wide places in the middle of small towns 10 miles apart where they used to park the cotton trailers going into and out of the cotton gins. Some little towns of a couple hundred souls may have had 2 or 3 gins. When I moved here in '79 there were 4 dairies within a 5 mile radius.....today none.

Today nothing but the wide open space in these little towns. Some had 3 or 4 banks. Now if there is one it's only because it's a branch of a larger site. A lot of little towns still have post offices but they aren't bricks and mortar any longer.....trailer houses! Times change. Un-official Marine motto: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome, (Clint Eastwood movie sitting on the steps of a building they cleared in the battle to get the college kids off of Granada Island). Folks did just that. Quit farming, moved to town, got an 8-5 job, solid pay check and sold the land to X-city slickers like me who were tired of all that urban hoopla and wanted some peace and quiet. I wasn't a Marine but I use their slogan daily.

My piece is an original 40 deeded from the US to a war of 1812 veteran, it has not been split. It was deeded in 1838, and I am only the third non-family owner.

Just a couple of hours ago, while driving past a Walmart and other businesses on 27th Street on the north edge of Lincoln, Nebraska, I commented to my wife that it seemed strange to think that 30 years ago we were racing stock cars where that Walmart now sits.

There was a 3/8 mile dirt track on the site back then. Homeowners got it shut down because of the noise, maybe 12-15 Sunday evenings a year. I often wonder what they think now with a 24 hour Walmart there.

I expect the Indian that owned it before 1812 would disagree.

" ... and they wrote it all down to the progess of Man. "

Yes, happened here, a huge racehorse farm years ago owned by Steven Sanford, Sanford stud farm, or Hurricana,a big farm with a training track ect. It's now a Walmart, price chopper Home Depot hannaford ect. Only I barn left on the place..

Just south of Odebolt Ia there was an outfit called Adams Ranch. From what I have read it was a twitch over 6000 contiguous acres and was the biggest farm in Iowa at one point in time. The main building site had workers quarters, huge corn cribs and a grain elevator both on the farm and in town. I forget how many teams of horses and mules they had but I can imagine it was plenty of them. Adams sold the farm back in the seventies and it has changed hands since then. The other day when I drove through Odebolt I could see the water tower still standing a mile away from the highway but I don't know what is left of the original building site. One article I read stated Adams ranch never had a mortgage.