Route 88 New Horseneck Road Will Destroy Farms, Westport
Posted on June 25, 2025 by Jenny ONeill
New Horseneck Road Will Destroy Farms, Westport
Dairymen Fear
Going out of business? Westport dairyman Arthur Tripp of Fair Home farm on Main Road wonders if he might not be going out of business shortly. The Commonwealth’s new access road linking uneconomical for him to continue operating his 75 acre farm. Other Westport farmers similarly affected by the proposed highway feel the same way.
While the State DPW forges ahead with plans for the new access road linking Route Six and Horseneck Beach, several Westport dairy farmers view the highway as a direct threat to their livelihood.
Said one farmer yesterday: “If that highway goes through I will have to sell out”.
Even as he spoke, Commonwealth surveyors were cutting down bushes and staking out the route which will cut his farm in two.
Other farmers, whose lands lie in the path of the access road, are in agreement that the highway can mean only one thing for them – economic ruin.
How, they ask, can we move cattle from one pasture to the other when the land is cut in two by a highway?
Underpasses which would probably solve their problems seen to be out of the picture.
No Underpasses – A DPW spokesman in Boston yesterday described the new highway as a limited access road” and verified that plans do not include underpasses or overpasses.
In fact, Sanford Goldstein of North Westport says he was told by a DPW official that underpasses are “impractical.” To build them would cost more than buying up his entire farm.
Together with his father and brothers, Sanford Goldstein operates a 70 acre dairy and cattle dealing farm on Gifford. The new highway will slice away 35 acres.
“It will make the land practically worthless”, says Goldstein.
Tripp owns 75 acres of land between Main Road and Drift Road. The new road will slice the farm nearly down the center – on one side will be milking sheds and marchland, on the other will be good pasture.
“You can’t move cattle and drive tractors across the main highway.” Tripp says “and to reach those pastures by any other path will mean traveling three miles.”
Thirty Years Work – Says Tripp: “I’ve spent thousands of dollars and thirty years work in developing my land. When I bought tis farm back in 1927, it was nothing but rocks and bushes. Now I have acres of good land, 50 head of cattle about 1,800 laying hens and raise 3,000-4,000 roasting chickens every year.
Dairy farmer John Angell of Gifford Road makes no bones about his plans if the road goes through.
“I’ll try to get out anyway I can” he says. “This road will put 40 acres of pasture on one side and 25 acres and all the farm buildings on the other.”
He added: “I just built a new barn before I knew anything about this project.”
In fact, he says, no one from the Public Works Department has yet told him the road will go through his land – even though surveyors were yesterday staking out the route on his land.
An alternative route for the highway has been suggested to DPW surveyors by Arthur Tripp but apparently it has failed to make any impression.
Suggesting that the highway be sited parallel to, but further west of the present proposed route. Tripp contends the road would then run south through woodland instead of crossing valuable farms.
Plan ‘Considered’ – District Engineer Frank Chace of Taunton said yesterday that this suggestion had been “considered”.
Westport farmers affected by the highway all concede that “there isn’t much we can do to stop the road going through except protest.”
Whether their protests will lead with any success waits to be seen.
But as a DPW spokesman said yesterday: “The line for the new highway is drawn – and it’s drawn as definitely as it can without minor changes.