I am completely 1000% unapologetic about lamenting the loss of Happy Days Farm every time I go by.
It used to be part of a Penn Land Grant. Actively farmed until the end, but they were tenant farmers. I honestly don’t know what will become of the historic structures on the land, but it looks like welcome to the apocalypse there now.
When did Chester County stop being about land preservation, farm preservation, historic preservation, and the very history of the county?
Just another nail in the coffin of what made Chester County Chester County.
Just absolutely breaks my heart. . .They’re creating another heat bubble!
I couldn’t read it all. The stories, memories implied or retold, and the history of Uwchlan and everywhere else are important. It’s not just to “remember when” from tales, written histories and photos. It’s important to keep, maintain, treasure the beauty of everything on the property.
Not remembering much of my childhood in Scarsdale, I do remember the street we lived on: Tall trees that that arched over the road, old estates with 3-storey tall chestnut trees, forsythia sharing the property lines, the ‘skating pond’ and the very tall hill on Sheldrake where all the kids and adults went and be thrilled with the speed of our sleds every winter snowfall.
Several years ago, I googled the area and was devastated. ALL the trees that shaded the road were gone. New roads with seemingly inappropriate homes had snaked into open fields.
Paradise has been taken over by builders, huge companies, and developers. Even with promises with proper environmental concerns, the huge amount of impervious land will overwhelm the now-small streams that lead to larger tributaries and finally into the Brandywine Creek…
I remembered John Prine’s “Paradise”
[Chorus]
And Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away
[Verse 3]
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
and I cried at the loss of land and history.