Location: 693600 4284466
Acreage: 13.00 (C-188) This property had no structures.
18.23 (C-329)
Contract price: $1,549.27
Property condemned on April 7, 1941
Condemnation price: $1,300
Today: thousands of daffodils, iris along road to house, yucca, cellar depression, trash ravine
Hodgen Bates died before the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the TNT landowners, so he never received his money. It went to his heirs: Frank Bates, Samuel C. McCluer, and C. W. Wilson.
In his book The Rape of Howell and Hamburg: An American Tragedy, Donald Muschany described Hodgen Bates: "[T]here was one genius I shall never forget, Hodgen Bates. Bates was a bachelor who built his own log house, dug his own cistern, and, get this, slept in the shell of a grand piano. . . . He played almost flawless chess, and knew just about everything worth knowing about nature. I spent many a Sunday afternoon talking with Hodgen, sometimes walking through the woods, while he identified this tree or that tree, birds, rocks, and soils. . . . Hodgen truly loved animals and never as much as killed a snake. . . . And he was an artisan and a voluminous reader, who remembered what he read. Our uncle, Karl, has a fine hexagonal tapered walnut cane made for his by Hodgen Bates. It is an exhibit of superb craftsmanship. . . . After thirty-five years, I was privileged to visit the old homesite of Mr. Bates. Of course, the house and he were long gone, but I felt his presence as I recognized many signs of the past. Along the hillside the flowering iris, or flags, continued to bloom where this good old man, Hodgen, had planted them."
These property inventories are either for the same structure, or a photo is missing.
