Well, it’s been a week since my last post. While not my intention to run silent for so long, I have yet to experience a day in my life that went according to plan, so really, why start now?
Now back to it–In my previous blog, Marvin Schmidt confronted choices (shall we say dilemmas) which many other Front Range landowners have faced. Ultimately, his decision (really no choice at all) was to sell. Let the truth be told … Marvin? He does not exist. Rather, he is an archetype for farmers whom I knew indirectly through family; I have heard their stories and pondered their quandaries. (I’m tired and in a punchy mood at the moment. I think I just identified myself as a “quandary ponderer.”) Full Stop. Deep breath, and….let’s begin again….
I feel compelled to reflect on suburban Chicago once more. The eight-foot tall unirrigated corn that grows in Illinois testifies to how different the region is from arid Northern Colorado, where corn is a fantasy without irrigation. What connects these disparate places, besides the obvious, such as–they’re both populated by people who call themselves Americans? At least one other thing.
Spread across Northeastern Illinois are neighborhoods, shopping malls, and businesses situated on plots that were once farmland, just like Marvin Schmidt’s fictional dairy farm lying somewhere between Denver and Ft Collins. There’s a connection–the choices these farmers faced.
Except for at least one couple. I never knew Dan or Ada Rice, who passed away in 1975 and 1977, respectively, without selling their 1300+ acres. When they died, the community around their farm faced a choice: develop or preserve. Wheaton developed, but as the image for this post shows, the community also chose to retain significant green space.
For the rest of the story, I turn to my father-in-law’s narrative: “Across the road to the south was another farm (now part of the Forest Preserve and set up as a demo farm), and the large estate of Dan and Ada Rice, who raised horses, which ran in the national Derbys. That Estate, together with the property going back to the west, has now been incorporated into the Danada Forest Preserve. Danada Square, the big commercial development on the north side of Butterfield at Naper Blvd, is also named for them. As I understand it, everything north of Rt. 56 would be left to the developers and all the land south of 56 would remain green space, including the Forest Preserves and the Wheaton Golf Club (which has also upped its game). (our neighbor T. C. discovered that by going into the woods in Herrick Lake Forest Preserve adjacent to the golf course, he could gather and sell back to the club, the golf balls he found. As I remember, this is where he died).
For a fascinating, quick read on the Rice family, Overview of the Danada Property & Rice Family History – Friends of Danada Fact Finders History Committee (danadahistory.org).
Despite the oft-bemoaned, bland sameness, suburbs have their own virtues. Ponder this–I harbor a certain amount of nostalgia for the rural life, but I don’t discount my wife Ella’s own nostalgia toward the suburban life in the eighties and nineties. “I don’t know how many hours I spent with my friends, laughing and story-telling, downing basket after basket of free Chili’s chips. I pity those poor servers.”
So, at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield Road you can to this day enjoy all the wonders of modern civilization, just as she did thirty-five years ago. And yet….and yet. Deep down, we all still long for the open spaces. South of Butterfield, she could still get lost in Herrick Lake Forest Preserve, hike the trails, and cross-country ski the open spaces in the winter. Not so bad…
