STANSBURY PARK — Here is what you'll see today if you stop by Kathie Shepherd's historic rock house on U-138:
Tall Chinese elm trees teeming with songbirds, white pelicans lounging on the dock next to a bubbling warm springs and the Great Salt Lake shimmering in the sun beneath Stansbury Island.
It is one of the most spectacular views in Tooele County, but it's now about to change. This summer, bulldozers will roll in to dig up the fields and wetlands and put a subdivision of 150 homes on property owned by a housing developer.
Tourists who stop every year to visit the historic 152-year-old Benson Grist Mill adjacent to Kathie's house will soon be gazing out at duplexes instead of ducks and empty fields, and that sickens Kathie.
"I've tried everything I can think of to stop this thing from going in," she says, "but they're determined to build it. The only option now is a lawsuit."
It's been 17 years since Kathie and her family moved into the charming rock home built in 1852 by E.T. Benson, the grandfather of late LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson. In that time, there have been some big changes in Tooele County, namely the arrival of affordable housing and thousands of new residents.
But few people dreamed that the rich corridor next to the grist mill would be developed, says Kathie. Not with its sandy soil, wildlife refuge and beautiful landscape.
Hoping to share the importance of holding onto one of Tooele County's most distinctive assets, Kathie, 60, invited me to join her for a Free Lunch of takeout chicken kabobs and salad at the quaint home she shares with her daughter, Karabeth, and 5-month-old granddaughter, Sunny.
Sitting beneath one of the stately elms in her spacious yard, she feeds Sunny a bottle of milk and looks out at the postcard view.
"When I was growing up," she says, "I always dreamed of owning a place like this. My dad was in the Air Force and I never had a place to call home. This beautiful place has helped me heal from a turbulent childhood. It's given me roots."
Kathie and other Stansbury Park residents pleaded with Tooele County commissioners not to allow the controversial housing development to happen, but the commission gave its final approval to the project last month. Now builders are set to arrive any day, and Kathie's only option is a lawsuit to get the development postponed or reversed.
She knows the odds aren't in her favor, "but I have nothing to lose by speaking out," she says. "I want to preserve this special place for my grandchildren and everybody else's grandchildren. We have swans out here, we have pheasants, deer and raccoons. I've seen every kind of wildlife we have in Utah here except bears and moose."
In her house, there is even a ghost who turns up now and then when Kathie plays hymns on the piano.
"It's a woman in white — she's very benevolent and really likes music," she says. "There's a very good feeling whenever she shows up. It's like she's just checking to make sure that everybody is all right."
Of course, says Kathie, things are not all right these days in Stansbury Park.
"I just wish that somebody would pay attention to what we're about to lose here," she says, gently swaying back and forth with Sunny as geese fly over her backyard. "This is such a peaceful setting, left alone until now by civilization. Once those machines move in here to dig it up, we'll never get it back."
Why is it that whenever we plow over paradise, asks Kathie, it's called progress?
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