| The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Subdivisions in Weiser, Idaho |
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| My first full winter at the ranch. By the time it quit snowing, we had gotten almost three feet of snow. Beautiful and very cold afterwards. This is the ranch house I inherited from Mr. & Mrs. Hand. They had lived there all their lives. At this time it was the only house on the old Chicken Hill Ranch, 500 acres of open land. |
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The Sage Mesa Ranch had about 320 acres of farmable land, and the rest of the 500 acres was idealy suited for cattle and horses. It had plenty of water just under the ground. From anywhere on the property the views of the surrounding country, the mountains and rivers, was fabulous. The gently rolling hills were to be ideal for places where you could build houses and give everyone a good view.I could see in my mind several places where I could put in subdivisions without messing up the ranch for farming and cattle or horses. I couldn't believe my luck in coming up with this particular piece of land. And in looking back, I wasn't wrong about anything on this piece of land. It proved to be exactly what I wanted. |
Even before I moved from Idaho Falls to Weiser, I had already begun setting up the plan for development of the land. I lined up a surveying outfit in Ontario, Oregon, just across the Snake River from Weiser that would take on the job of laying out my first subdivision. I also had to make the necessary legal arrangements with the sellers, Mr. and Mrs. Hand, to allow me to sell off pieces of the property while they still had the paper on the entire ranch. They agreed to work with me and I planned to turn over to them 50% of the sale price of every parcel or lot sold to them to be used to pay off the remaining mortgage.
I also had entered into a business arrangement with the son-in-law of Mr. & Mrs. Hand to go into the feed and cattle business with him, and to jointly farm the property that first year. This gentleman had almost 250 mother cows we put on the property and we together farmed about 300 acres, jointly buying a huge four-wheel drive tractor to do much of the work.
The photos in the following section are general views of the property as I bought it. There were no roads, only paths up and down and across the hills for tractors and other equipment. Fences divided up the property to keep horses and cows from getting into the grain and hay crops as they were growing. Much of the land was in its natural state of large sage brush.
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| My second John Deere tractor, a 4430 four wheel drive that I used to farm the land. |
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| I bought this machine from a potato grower in Emmett, Idaho right off the fields where it was pulling a harvesting machine. I spent lots of hours on this on my fields in all kinds of weather, day and night. |
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| In the photo gallery below, click on the center arrow on the control line to move the photos automatically through the whole bunch. If you want to stop on one and view it longer, then just hit the double line in the center again and it will stop. Hit the black arrow again and it will start for you. Thanks. |
I took the lower pasture of some 30 acres, the piece closest to town, and had an engineering firm draw me up a subdivision with 21 building sites. A road was to run through it diagonally, and a road down two sides. The smallest lot as per the requirement by the City and County was 1 acre and the largest was 1.75 acres. I had it laid out in three building areas, a 9 lot, 7 lot and 5 lot layout. I used almost none of the good farmland that I could keep using for years to come as I further developed the land.
In keeping with my plan to farm and ranch the place as I developed home sites, I got busy with building a large steel barn where I could keep the hay and grain and house a brood mare setup and also have room to work on my equipment. I bought a huge John Deere 4630 4WD tractor which I was then to use in farming as well as in doing much work on the developing subdivisions. I ran it all myself. I even got good at maintaining all the equipment, fencing, etc.
Again, use the same technique as above to view the photos below, in a show with the photos going past you or one at a time.
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| The Sage Mesa Subdivision, 21 lots, 1.0 - 1.75 acres in size |
The lots in my new subdivision sold well. Not only local people bought the building sites, but also visitors to the area that liked it purchased lots and built themselves homes there in Weiser. The owner of Westlake Realty in Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, California bought a nice lot and had me build him an all-cedar home on it, and when he sold his realty, he moved onto the site.
Every lot was to have access to City Water which was to come later through a Local Improvement District LID, utilities underground and a paved road out in front of their house.
The following are thumbnail photos of some of the houses that have since been built on the first subdivision lots.
In addition to this subdivision, I also developed another 50 acres in larger lots, every lot with a million dollar view. They sold very quickly. To this day I still have one large building parcel with great views.
You can get a slide show of all the houses that I have photos of if you like by hitting the center arrow below. Hit the double line in the same location while the show is going on to stop the show to view any of the houses that you would like.
When you are done with viewing the show, hit the double lines in the center of the control line at the bottom and the show will end.
On the smaller photos at the bottom, you can click on the photo to get a larger view which will be shown at the top of the photo album.
Thanks.
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