A Small Patch of Land

These are pictures of a farm in Newtown, Pa.  I took them from a rural road just off of route 332, near I-95.  It is one of the few farms remaining in the area, since the Newtown area was transformed by the building boom of the eighties.  Until that time, there were plenty of places where horses like these could be seen, as well as cows and sheep.  But the proximity of Newtown and neighboring Yardley to New Jersey and Philadelphia made it a prime area for sprawl coming from those areas.  And during that time, gas prices were not so much an issue, so people were willing to drive an hour each way to and from work.  Especially for those in the metro New York and Princeton areas, Bucks County provided an ideal place to fulfill the American dream of owning a home for those who were willing to drive a little farther (or sometimes a lot farther).

However, if I am correct, the farm pictured here is either on or across route 332 from the proposed site of Aria Hospital’s new Bucks Campus.  Aria’s current location is a few miles away, near Sesame Place.  What is shown in this picture may not be there much longer.  The fairly new houses in the background also show that this farm was larger until recently.  But as of right now, there is still this small patch of farmland.  How much longer it will remain that way, I don’t know.  I may someday be able to show the date on the corner of this picture as evidence of how late this patch of land remained rural.

The small creek seen in these pictures is the Core Creek, which flows a few miles until it is received by the Neshaminy Creek.  Shortly before it reaches the Neshaminy, a park was built around the creek and named after it.  Sometime during the late 1970’s, a dam was constructed and Core Creek was flooded into a lake, known as Lake Luxemburg.  Here it lies in a natural setting.  I have never been out west, or to the plains, but in this picture, the creek looks like the streams I have seen in movies set out in the prairies.  On the East Coast, it seems that most bodies of fresh water are surrounded by trees and other vegetation, while here the Core Creek is just running through grassy ground, without anything big growing on its banks.