Download [Page] [Document]
mcc-bc1-390
The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 376
Lambert interviewed Sam Jr. while they were slowly driving through the area that was once Pond Beat. When they passed the Arsenal Yacht Club, Sam commented, “That was a good piece of cotton ground.” He wanted to see the old sawmill pond where his father had the steam-powered mill, but the dirt track that led to the water was barred by a gate. The rocket and laser firing range was on the other side. When they turned back on Buxton Road, Sam saw a large oak tree. That was where he and his brothers had been chased by a swarm of bumblebees when they were boys. Sam Jr. looked at the tree and found a small metal Sam Harris Jr. visited the home his father built where he was born and raised. He holds the photograph of his family on the porch of the house as they bade it farewell. Photo source: The Huntsville Times, September 2, 1984. identification plate on the trunk. It was officially Tree No. 56. According to Lambert, Sam “pointed toward the fenced-in munitions storage building just off the Redstone Arsenal road ” and said, “Now I believe that was where the old store was.” Then Sam added, “The Methodist church was over there,” pointing to an open field on the opposite side of the road. Sam Jr. added that it was different “back then” because “what wasn't farmland and pasture was woodland and swamp.” [Note: One correction is warranted. The road described is not Redstone Arsenal road. It is the old Farley-Triana highway, now called Buxton Road.] In an August 22, 1984 article in The Redstone Rocket, “Harris family”, p. 3, Sam Harris commented about leaving the farm: When the family sold the farm for $75 per acre they and others forced to sell to the Army received the going rate for farmland in the area, Harris said, but no allowance was made for the difficulty of having to move all the equipment and livestock of a large farming operation and reestablish a farm elsewhere. It was a tremendous injustice to the people down there. They paid them fair market value for land being put up for sale at that particular time but what they didn't pay you for was the hardship and adverse circumstances 376 - (4409)