Another Man and His Horses

Mauweehoo Hill On the Left 

     If you can imagine Mauweehoo Hill as fields terraced by stone walls, you see it as it was in the early 1960s. At the top of the hill was a large field, and there, every summer weekend afternoon, Colvin Farley and the other adult men played polo. It was the children's job to ride his horses from the Timber Trails stables along Pepper Pond and Lake Mauweehoo to the field, and to cool the horses between chukkhas.

     Ward Moss was the only young man invited to play. Farley was impressed with Ward's horse skills, let him ride and train his horses. Ward also recalls Farley's  stableman, Bill Nardeen, a former Sargeant in the Calvary. Farley at one time played polo professionally.

     His family's money came from real estate development. In the early 20th Century, his father developed Westchester's tonier suburb, Scarsdale. His family are listed in the 1931 Westchester Social Register (Includes Greenwich), along with their college and club affiliations. In that era, wealthy suburban families might have a retreat further in the country. Buying up a clutch of former farms in 1930, Farley created Timber Trails, A Restricted Community, for such families. Cottages were built of stone and craftsman style beams. The former Diamon Durgy diary barn became the stables, a lake was created from Jenning's Pond, and a steep pasture outfitted with a tow-rope for skiing. Former farm roads were kept clear of brush for trail rides.

     Farley died before putting in place any strategy to preserve what he had so lovingly created. As Nick Paumgarten writes in The New Yorker, real estate sales are precipitated by the 3 D's, Death, Divorce and Diapers. Farley's death, previous divorce and his children by his ex-wife played their parts, but Paumgarten forgot the 2 L's, Lawyers and Lawsuits. The property had already became the subject of a much cited case, Plimpton v Mattakeunk Cabin Colony in 1934.

     I've looked at the deeds purchasers were required to sign in buying a house in Timber Trails, and they are certainly restrictive in nature. No social restriction is spelled out, but I think Farley was a snob, of the Anglophile variety. Northeastern Connecticut had been isolated for a 100 years from the wave of Southern European immigrants found in Connecticut's central valley and coastal manufacturing cities. If Farley didn't like to associate with non-WASPs, he no doubt twirled in his grave at what happened next. The lawyer, of Italian extraction, got it all and,  accustomed to Greenwich, Connecticut density, wanted to develop it. To Plimpton were added Timber Trails Corporation v Planning and Zoning in 1992, and Timber Trails Associates et al v Planning and Zoning in 2006. Massive development was forestalled, but the community as such was shattered.

     An aura of decay hovers over the place today, tennis courts ploughed under, docks removed. 100 years from now, will anyone remember the reservoir of resentment real estate created?