His brother farms another chunk, and a handful of nephews cultivate the rest. Though Sam Sullivan's original 2,000 acres has been carved up among his various descendants, it has remained basically intact, enough so that the family still refers to it collectively as "the Sullivan land." Jim grows a smattering of crops - corn, wheat, sunflowers, milo, some soy beans - on about 1,000 acres, some of which are in his father's name, some of which he rents from his non-farming relatives. Farming, he says, "was always in my blood." "He had the equipment and all, so I made him a deal and moved in and started farming," Jim Sullivan recalls. His son Jim, in his mid-30s at the time, had spent the past decade working in town, supervising tellers at Ennis State Bank, but he'd begun to chafe at the bland monotony of office work. Grandson John retired from farming in 1985. By the time he died in 1939 he'd accumulated some 2,000 acres, which were divided equally among his three children, and then further divided among Sullivan's descendants as the years passed, some of whom farmed and some of whom went on to other work. He made enough off his first year's harvest to buy the property and enough in subsequent years to acquire neighboring parcels. He'd soon squirreled away enough of his earnings to rent a small tract of land and plant his own crop, about a dozen miles southwest of Ennis. The Houston and Texas Central Railroad had come to Ellis County two decades earlier and transformed the area from lightly used pastureland to a powerhouse of cotton production, a place where an enterprising young man with a knack for farming might carve out a foothold.Ĭlarence - he went by Sam - found work as a farmhand. A runaway buckboard had killed his parents when he was a child, leaving him to be raised by an older brother who scratched out a meager living outside Canton. Though barely 18, he was already well-tempered by life. Sullivan arrived in Ellis County in 1890 to seek his fortune. "They would be missing out on a lot of business," Rachel says.Īlthough there are many factors that will influence the project timeline, TCR has set 2021 as a target opening date, with an estimated $10 billion projected construction cost.Clarence E. With the booming population and explosive growth from incoming ExxonMobil, Rachel says she's not the only one who would feel snubbed if the Woodlands is overlooked. The feds will spend the next months evaluating the environmental impact of all five possible routes. Now it's up to the federal government to make the next move. Texas Central Railway (TCR), the private company behind the project, identified routes along Highway 290 or Highway 249 as its preferred alignments to the Federal Railroad Administration. "It is very expensive and very disruptive to people to build in an active freeway," Robert Eckels, President, Texas Central Railway says. Because the existing development and greater population density compared to other routes, an I-45 line would be more complicated to build, and it would come with a bigger price tag. "It makes sense because it's the most congested, it's where the most population growth is," Bruce Tough, Chariman of Woodlands Township explains.īut Thee Woodlands route could be the path of most resistance. By 2035, TxDOT expects the four-hour drive to increase to six hours because of continued population growth and additional traffic.īecause of that additional traffic, The Woodlands Township is also pushing for an I-45 alignment.
The Texas Department of Transportation predicts that the amount of time it takes to drive between Houston and Dallas will only grow over the next couple of decades. time is money when you own a business," she explains.
"First off, I could work while I was traveling to Dallas. That's why this wife and well-known wedding planner supports a 90-minute high speed rail line, one that would run along I-45. "Let me say my hail Marys and please Jesus let me arrive in one piece!" Rachel Leuck spends eight or more hours every week driving from her home in The Woodlands to her office in Dallas and back. More than five routes into the Houston area are being discussed, but the ones at the top of the list bypass The Woodlands. THE WOODLANDS, TX (KTRK) - High speed rail has a lot of people saying "not in my backyard." But the one community pushing hardest for rail may be least likely to go get it.
0 kommentar(er)
