The road to farm hell is a straightaway, contends landowner Sandra Dannehold.
Winding rural curves of Country Club Lane, amid gentle rolling hills in southwestern Illinois, snake against Dannehold’s 178-year-old operation. Bucolic and picturesque.
In a nutshell, the city fathers of Waterloo and Monroe County want to straighten the road and pour on asphalt.
“It doesn’t take a data center or a solar farm to take farm ground out of production,” Dannehold says. “All it takes is local government with a bad idea. A half-mile road in the wrong place can do it.”
“I’m doing everything in my power to stop a road that will make it too dangerous to farm here, and I think I know the ultimate purpose of the road: development. Government makes more tax money off residences than farms.”
“My only goal is to make sure we and our neighbors can farm here, and preserve this ground and habitat, as we have for decades,” she adds. “This would be easier for all of us if we were just willing to jump on the ‘sell-the-farm bandwagon,’ get our money out, and let them do what they want. But they have one problem they can’t get around and they don’t understand. There are some landowners who don’t care about the money.”
Save a Life, Save a Farm
Thirty miles southeast of the heart of St. Louis, across the Mississippi River, sits Waterloo, the seat of Monroe County. Despite an overall population decline in Illinois, Waterloo is growing. However, the growth comes with a cost, according to Dannehold: erasure of an historic German farming community identity by cookie-cutter subdivisions.
Beyond Waterloo’s city limits, she shepherds 300 acres of picturesque cropland, with grain bins, machine sheds, and cattle buildings (a small beef herd)—rooted to family ownership since 1848.
The 300 acres are split into two tracts by tar-and-chip Country Club Lane. One tract, at 140 acres, has been in her father’s family since 1879. It includes Dannehold’s house (in which she and her brother, Terry, grew up), and is dubbed “Pop’s Farm.” The other, at 160 acres, a stone’s throw south across two-lane Country Club Lane, is called “Mom’s Farm,” and was purchased by the maternal branch of the family in 1848.
If Waterloo and Monroe County officials get their druthers, the curving road rubbing against Dannehold’s property will become a paved, straight shot connecting nearby subdivisions and a country club—progress, in local government’s eyes, to relieve traffic congestion from subdivision creep.
Dannehold, an attorney by trade, now retired, can scrap gravel with the sharpest minds: extreme intelligence matched by mettle. Her brother, Terry, a Ph.D. in physics, made his bones at Bell Labs. They have joint ownership of the operation. The pair are in lockstep regarding the future of Dannehold Farms.
Their situation initially developed when Dannehold and other landowners first learned of the road project via an article in the local Republic-Times (June 16, 2021). “The level of disrespect was unconscionable,” she says. “The county felt it had no reason to contact us for input or even be courteous.”
The county’s decision was made, Dannehold contends, without looking at the associated properties, or studying the hydrology or traffic. “It was a line drawn on a map at a desk.”
Six months later, in January 2022, Monroe County engineer Aaron Metzger sent Dannehold a letter:
I am writing to inform you of the County and City of Waterloo’s plan to move forward with the extension of Rogers Street North…
At this time, we are considering Phase I, the extension of Rogers Street north approximately 2500 ft. and the realignment of Country Club Lane, terminating at the Rogers Extension.
Work adjacent to your property will be limited to the tie-in to the existing Country Club Lane, whether additional right-of-way will be required is unclear at this time.
“Farmers’ heritages and futures were reduced to a ‘Phase I’ of a road plan with a few keystrokes. It’s insulting. And it’s incompetence to think this will all be fine,” Dannehold says. “Someone is going to get killed. Pump in speeding traffic where tractors, combines, sprayers, grain trucks, trailers, and tanks of anhydrous ammonia turn in and out?”
Metzger, in an email response to Agweb.com, contends road straightening would not create a higher volume of traffic. “I do not anticipate that the project will directly increase traffic in front of her (Dannehold) property. I have no data that reflects that straight roads are more dangerous than windy/hilly roads. Speed enforcement is a law enforcement issue.”
Dannehold’s driveway emerges at a corner between the driveway to Pop’s Farm and the edge of Mom’s Farm, at the top of a hill. The corner has a posted speed limit of 15 mph. It acts as a speed bump—vehicles can enter and exit Dannehold’s driveway safely. The overall 40-mph speed limit of Country Club Lane would not change, according to Monroe County plans, but the buffer from the corner would be gone.
“Asphalt and a straightaway at the top of a hill? That speed limit will be ignored.” Dannehold adds: “Not to mention the high volume of water that will flow downhill from a half mile of straightway and could wash out the only road to my home, sheds, and bins.”
Pop’s Farm is accessed by a quarter-mile rock driveway splitting two parcels Dannehold doesn’t own. The new road would be on a slope overlooking that driveway.
“They think because they only want a ‘sliver’ of my ground at the beginning of my driveway that I shouldn’t be concerned about traffic or water? I shouldn’t be concerned about being killed just turning out of my driveway? But this is about development,” she says. “My guess is that they think that if we can’t farm it, maybe we’ll sell it to developers. They probably think: ‘Those people over there are all old anyway.’”
Where Goes the Water?
Dannehold and a neighbor have major concerns over water control. Initially, the county insisted water would adequately funnel through a 42” culvert, installed decades earlier by Dannehold’s father, Harold, beneath the farm driveway.
“I told the engineer, ‘That culvert’s not big enough now.’ He finally hired an outside engineer which we think cost $10,000 or $15,000, and sure enough, I was right. The culvert was described as ‘significantly undersized.’ Now, the county has come back with assurances about detention ponds on the neighbor’s property, and that won’t be cheap for taxpayers. I’ll stick with common sense and the knowledge we’ve acquired over generations about how water moves here. I’m not trusting lives, livelihoods, our history, and our future, to the county. When we ask questions, they either have no answers or their answers are wrong.”
Metzger responds: “I have employed a consulting engineer to design the project, including detention of stormwater runoff leaving the site. I have asked them to follow the County Code which requires a 10% reduction in stormwater runoff from the existing condition.”
Monroe County’s potential construction work, Dannehold says, comes with no guarantees upon completion. “The county has ignored letters from attorneys up to now. They will ignore the letters that tell them the road has washed out, too.”
After five years of waiting, and “periodic, unpredictable communications,” the county has provided no schedule of operations, Dannehold, 68, says: “It verges on elder abuse.”
In early 2026, hoping to raise public awareness, she placed signs on t-posts at the end of her driveway, on ground owned by her cousin (whose land would also be taken by the straightaway): Save a Life! Save a Farm! No Straightaway Here! (The straightaway would run for about half a mile along a hill to the west of the signs.)
“Farms have been disappearing for decades, and it’s partly because people are hesitant to speak up until it’s too late,” she notes. “I’m not afraid to call it out. There’s much more to come after this straightaway and everyone knows it.”
Translated: Pavement births power lines, lighting, bike paths, and houses.
“I know what the county wants and they’re not getting it,” Dannehold emphasizes. “I am my father’s daughter. And my mother’s.”
A Jar of Jelly
Beware of bureaucrats wearing wide grins and bearing jars of jelly, Dannehold says.
In 2006, a subdivision went in behind Mom’s Farm on Country Club Lane on ground annexed by Waterloo. “A city official came down the road to the house and came into the yard with a jar of jelly and what Mom (Irene) called ‘a piece of paper’ to sign. They wanted an earthmoving contractor to come on her farm and realign part of it next to the subdivision. No check, no discussion of terms and conditions, no negotiation. Just a jar of jelly, and a piece of paper for an elderly woman, on oxygen, to sign.”
Irene refused to sign. She kept the jelly.
“Mom passed away in 2010. Dad lived until 2017. But before he died, he told me: ‘You know enough to keep the farm running. You can live there. You be in charge.’ That’s what I’m doing. And I intend to keep doing it.”
“I love our history with our farms designated a Sesquicentennial Farm and a Centennial Farm by the State of Illinois. I love that Dad had faith in me, especially because when we were kids, he didn’t think we knew enough to hold a flashlight for him,” Dannehold laughs.
“And I love the farmers, Gregson Farms, that now work my land and rent the pasture,” she continues. “They farmed for Dad, and now us. A road straightening will put them at risk every day with cars flying down asphalt on a straightaway at the top of a hill. I can’t have them, their children, and now grandchildren, coming to the farm and being at risk. I’m not letting that happen.”
The projected expense of road-straightening is difficult to separate from the overall construction project. Phase I and Phase II will cost about $6.9 million according to the Republic-Times (April 2025). Dannehold scoffs at the number. “They draw lines on maps. What do they really know about what they will run into? They’ve already spent tens of thousands on engineers and preliminary reports and plans. This straightaway will be entirely outside of the city limits, but the City of Waterloo is paying half of the cost? The city has already written the county checks. At first, city officials told residents that wasn’t legal. Suddenly they were doing it anyway. They wrote an agreement—but is the agreement legal? No one will tell me how.”
Lip Service
For over a century, Dannehold Farms has survived depressions, recessions, droughts, illnesses, and calamities of all stripes. “Our farms survived them all, and it’s nothing less than a miracle that this ground is still in our family,” Dannehold explains. “But the county putting a bull’s-eye on our backs now—that’s a trickier problem. And I’m sure the county won’t be happy to hear we are looking into keeping it in agriculture even after we are gone.”
In 2023, Monroe County adopted a resolution: Whereas, the County recognizes the value agriculture contributes to our County and the rural way of life is the backbone of our country. Efforts should be made to accommodate future success of the rural community. . . Let it be resolved, the County of Monroe elected board and County staff will work to support and promote the development of agriculture for the benefit of our County and all its residents.
“The county is acting contrary to its own resolution and proclamations in pursuing this straightaway,” Dannehold posits. “But I wouldn’t expect more than lip service from the county anyway.”
“My requests for meetings with the county commissioners have all been ignored. It’s five years of keeping us in limbo. They seem dedicated to one track, never even considering options, including improving the existing road. We offered ground to improve sight lines at one corner. They apparently never thought about outlets from two subdivisions to an existing road behind them. They want a main road—an only road—at the worst possible place,” Dannehold adds. “There are cheaper ways, other ways, in other places. This makes no sense, unless the plan is to push farmers out.”
Dannehold concludes with family precedent. “Before that Waterloo official brought the jelly up the road 20 years ago, my dad had been warned that there would be a visitor from the city. He said, ‘We’ll be ready for them.’ Well, we’ll be ready for them this time, too.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
Georgia Watermelon Heist Explodes into Epic Night of Pandemonium
Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M
When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case
Cold-Busted: Frozen Deer Decoy Nabs Poachers and Cocaine in Spectacular Sting
Sticky Fingers: USDA Fraudster Steals $200M in Stunning Scam
