You all like to quibble about this stuff. Personally, I find it sad.
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Last Known Active Farm Inside Beltway Sold Tue Jul 5, 7:08 PM ET
The last known working farm inside the Capital Beltway has been sold to a North Carolina developer planning to build a strip mall.
The 35-acre Prince George's farm has been in Duane Dickerson's family since the 1880s. But the 62-year-old said he is leaving because of a lack of profitability, along with increased population and increased crime inside the Beltway â?? a freeway that encircles the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
"This used to be the country and years ago even the family name was on the old road maps, the area was so sparse," Dickerson told The Washington Post. "This was all farms â?? close to D.C., but it was all farms."
Dickerson said he's found stolen cars torched and abandoned on his property. One of his llamas was shot and killed, and one of his horses was left with a 9-inch cut across its neck, he said. Last month the barn his father built in 1939 was burned down.
Still, Dickerson hasn't given up on farming entirely. He is packing his possessions onto tractor-trailers and moving to a 22-acre farm he bought in Emmitsburg, about 13 miles south of Gettysburg, Pa.
Many family owned farms still exist just a few miles beyond the Beltway, but the sale of the Dickerson property has piqued some local nostalgia for a time when the District was surrounded by countryside.
"It's sad in a way to see the passing of an era," said M.H. Jim Estepp, a former Prince George's County Council member who went to high school with Dickerson and rode horses on the farm.
