The Flying Fish Farm has nothing to do with fish, though Salt Creek winds its way through the nearby wilderness, below a steep embankment that marks the eastern line of the property.
It has everything to do with a large windsock that flew on the land in the mid-'70s, a free-spirited namesake hinting at the heart of the property, which has become the focal point of a controversial housing development planned across the street.
Kathleen Danker, an English scholar and retired professor who goes by K.D., has owned the property since 1980, when she and a friend who rented rooms in the large old house on the land put down $20,000 to buy it and the little more than 2 acres of wooded land on which it sits.
“She and I bought it so we all didn’t have to move out,” Danker said.
The property is an anomaly: a piece of private land surrounded on three sides by Wilderness Park on what — until last week — was just outside the city limits, across the street from a swatch of open land owned by the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln.
At the moment, that land is also the site of a prayer camp set up by a group of Native leaders who oppose the City Council’s May 2 approval of zoning and annexation ordinances that will allow Sam Manzitto Jr. to proceed with plans to build more than 500 single-family homes, townhouses and apartments on about 75 acres.
They fear the development, called Wilderness Crossing, will destroy the sanctity of a Native sweat lodge located nearby — across First Street, down a gravel driveway, past a house dating to the 1900s, in a clearing on land known these days simply as the Fish Farm.
Years ago — before Danker bought it — a colorful University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor who owned the land had his own issues with the city and wanted to protect the 1,475-acre park that was his neighbor.
David Hibler — who made news in the 1990s for various controversies, one of which ended with him being fired from UNL — also made news in the 1970s for, among other things, his objections to construction of the West Bypass.
What was then a proposed thoroughfare now known as U.S. 77 that runs along the western edge of Wilderness Park prompted Hibler to make an unsuccessful bid for Lancaster County commissioner in 1974, largely because of the damage he feared the expressway would do to the park.
A year later, he made news again for refusing to appear in court on charges that he let his goats graze in Wilderness Park, a charge that appeared to have as much to do with a disagreement with a park ranger as with the goats.
Hibler moved in 1976 — before the sweat lodge arrived — and began renting rooms in the house, which dates to the early 1900s. Danker moved there in 1979, and remembers the sweat lodge always being there, a part of the place where people have gravitated to for years.
Danker estimates that about 150 people have stayed at the house over the past 46 years, with the Fish Farm a refuge of sorts for those needing a place to stay till they figured out what was next for them. Some stayed just a short time, others for decades.
“It was a good place for people who were transitioning,” she said. “How long they would stay kind of depended on if they fell in love with the place — the land.”
Residents have ranged from people in their 20s — like Danker was when she first arrived — to parents with children to those in their 80s. They’ve come because it’s affordable, they’ve come to spend time in Wilderness Park, and they’ve come because of the people and community there.
“When you get here, some people really take to the place,” she said.
Danker was one of them.
About a year after she moved there, she and her friend bought it, and in 1985, she and her husband bought out her friend’s interest in the property, after the friend moved out of state.
She’d likely still live there, had South Dakota State University not offered her a job in the department of English and interdisciplinary studies.
Danker, who’d earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s and doctorate in English at the University of Nebraska, decided to take the job in 1990, though she and her husband kept the land, turning the collection of the still-modest rent and maintenance of the place over to longtime residents.
Now retired and widowed, Danker still comes back to visit regularly.
Listen now and subscribe: | | | |
“I still think of it as my home,” she said.
The land is littered with evidence of its residents over the years: a ceramic face placed in a tree stump, an old bicycle, an outdoor space created by a longtime resident who had an affinity for art and collectibles, the remnants of what was once a large garden.
Inside the house, now cluttered with boxes and years' worth of belongings, the walls are adorned with oil canvases painted by a resident’s brother — including a landscape of the back garden of the property — and brightly-colored fish adorn the walls.
Outside, there’s old lawn furniture, a shed, an old pole barn, and a horse barn where Hibler once kept his horses.
And the sweat lodge.
Danker said she didn’t know, until recently, that Native spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog helped establish the sweat lodge years ago, nor did she realize just how important it was to Native people here — and others who have found it a place for recovery and renewal.
Danker stands firmly behind those who hope to convince either city officials or the developer to make additional concessions to protect the sanctity of the sweat lodge and the peacefulness of the Fish Farm — and to include Native voices in city government.
“I am thoroughly aligned with the Native people,” she said.
Just what will happen with the prayer camp remains to be seen. Amy Olson, a spokeswoman for Manzitto Construction, said the company isn’t willing to consider additional changes to the development — other than those agreed to as part of the plan approved by the City Council.
Kevin Abourezk, one of the leaders of the prayer camp, said leaders have met with Manzitto and the mayor, as well as the police chief. The open lines of communication are good, but Abourezk said they need to see some tangible change.
“If it’s just a promise of a meeting, it’s not enough,” he said. “Native people have been given so many promises and they just never, ever hold true.”
When the City Council approved the zoning and annexation ordinances May 2, the annexation included land surrounding the development, including the Fish Farm.
The privately-owned land wasn’t made part of Wilderness Park years ago because it wasn’t in the flood plain, said both Danker and Lincoln Parks and Recreation Director Lynn Johnson.
The site is on a hillside that runs from the land across the street, Danker said. At the top — near where the tipis now sit — the view reaches Saltillo Road to the south and the state Capital to the north, she said.
Wilderness Park was established in 1972 as both flood protection and to preserve a natural area for the public to use. The city planted many of the trees, Johnson said, to help slow the flow of stormwater.
The disputed land wasn’t identified in a 1999 study about the need to acquire land around the park to create a buffer. But in a portion of the park just north of the Fish Farm, the city has been taking out trees and replacing them with native grasses in an effort to protect a sandstone outcropping and the prickly pear cactus that grows there, Johnson said.
The city has suggested creating a neighborhood park in the development to protect the sandstone hill, though Johnson said it could also be created at a lower point nearer First Street — and the Fish Farm — though the developer has yet to agree to a park.
The annexation means Danker will eventually have to hook up to city sewer and electricity, a concern for her, and she worries that city regulations might impact the sweat lodge.
City Planning Director David Cary said he doesn’t think that’s an issue.
“It’s an activity on a piece of private property that’s there,” he said. “There’s no concern.”
Danker also worries about how the development will change her land — and has the same flooding concerns of other opponents of the development, who also worry about how traffic, light and noise pollution will affect the park.
‘It will change the nature of the place,” she said. “It’s so quiet and secluded.”
She doesn’t know what will happen in the future, but said the Fish Farm is dear to her — her husband’s ashes and those of a longtime resident are scattered there — and for others who’ve made their home there.
“I’ve always felt the place was important, not just for the land itself — it was important for the people who lived here and for those who use the sweat lodge.”
K.D. Danker stands near the eastern edge of her property near South First Street and Pioneers Boulevard with Wilderness Park and Salt Creek behind her. Known as the Fish Farm, her annexed land is surrounded on three sides by the park.
The house on K.D. Danker's property, known as the Fish Farm, where people have rented rooms for years and enjoyed Wilderness Park that surrounds the land.