Posted on 01/13/2006 8:38:09 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NAPLES, Fla. - A homesteader leaving his Everglades land after years of fighting the state's claim on it is moving to a bigger, nicer house, but he mourns what he's lost.
"I will never see the turkeys run up and down the road again," said Jesse Hardy, 70. "I will never see my deer feed in my yard again. ... I will never be able to freely do what I wanted to do."
Hardy's land was the last of 19,000 parcels purchased by the state over the past two decades to help return the Everglades to its natural state. Most owners happily sold, having bought in a 1960s land scam.
Hardy rejected repeated offers, however, saying he wanted to hang onto a dying rural lifestyle and pass it on to the 9-year-old boy he has raised on the land with the boy's mother.
A judge approved a settlement last year, and Hardy accepted a $4.95 million check in July. The deadline for him to leave the property was Thursday.
Hardy paid $60,000 in 1976 for the land about 40 miles east of Naples. He built a small, clapboard house on his 160 acres, dug a well and used propane instead of electricity.
With the settlement money, Hardy bought a new house and was moving his belongings into it this week, but he says it really isn't home for him. "It don't fit me, it don't fit me at all," he said.
Construction crews are scheduled to start filling in canals and tearing apart roads on Hardy's Everglades land later this year. Once restored, his parcel and the surrounding area will connect with a state forest and wildlife reserves.
The $8.4 billion Everglades project seeks to restore the slow-moving river that once stretched uninterrupted from a chain of lakes near Orlando south to Florida Bay.
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On the Net:
http://www.evergladesplan.org
Why was this a land scam? He paid $60K for 160 acres on which he was able to build a home and live. That doesn't sound like a scam to me. The only scam I see is the government taking 5 million from the taxpayers to buy a shack from a guy who deosn't really want to sell it so they can tear it down and add another 160 acres of swamp to the biggest swamp America.
Oh, I missed that.
here you go. don't laugh too hard, chris already thinks I'm insane.
mmmmmmm.... I'd trade the turkeys & deer to get away from the mosquitoes. And the poisonous snakes. Oh, and $4.95 million ....??????
You know this guy?
Jesse is holding up the wrong finger.
Jesse is holding up the wrong finger.
Nope. SEALs were first commisioned in 1962, so I guess it's possible........maybe.
Five million BUCKS??? He'll be crying all the way to the bank - in his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.
Why does he have to leave some of his belongings behind? Surely he could hire an entire moving company for .00001% of his profit? I feel badly that he lost his true dream home, all the same.
I live in a suburban development in metrowest Boston, and I get deer and turkeys in my backyard all the time. (Not to mention foxes and coyotes, also).
The goverment wastes more money than that each day on studies trying to find out how their money was wasted. As for him I say more power to him, he made a profit on the money he spent on the land and that's the name of the game.
Is Florida swamp land really worth $30,000+ an acre? Or are the taxpayers getting screwed again?
The money he made came out of your pocket though.
It was developed in the late Fifties, early 60's. hundreds of miles of canals dug, draining the swamp land, hundreds of miles of roads where laid. The developers went bankrupt, and everything was just left alone. It is not swamp land, there is some wetalnd areas, alot of it is high and dry.
Collier County discouraged building in the area, because they did not want to be responsible for the infra structure, and maintenance.
I narrowly missed hitting a turkey bolting across the Merritt Parkway last year. Of course, with this payoff the gentleman can buy a modest home in Darien or Greenwich and watch them there.
Is this the area?
http://www.google.com/local?f=q&hl=en&q=naples,+fl&ll=26.108895,-81.529369&spn=0.065974,0.170288&t=h
I've seen these giant plots of undeveloped canals and roads on the outskirts of Florida cities before and wondered why they were there.
Yes that is the area, if you follow the canal that is in the middle, there is a light yellow brownish area on the right of the middle canal. That is Jesse's property.
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