Harms Road

From the Lester Harms collection.

Harms Road is an odd little stretch of two-lane blacktop just south of Route 30. It cuts diagonally across the countryside to connect two regular east-west section roads, E. 83rd and E. 89th. Back in the old days (circa 1930s, perhaps later) it was known as the Sitzenstock Road in honor, I believe, of the family of Ernest and Emma Sitzenstock, whom we find on the 1908 Plat Map owning a farm that straddled the road just as it dove southwest from present-day E. 83rd Ave. Its name was changed in honor of Lester and Mathilda "Sue" Harms, who owned 80 acres at the junction of Colorado St. and the Sitzenstock road at the time the road names were being formalized and set — well, not in stone, but on street signs and maps, I suppose. Why them, instead of any of the other landowners along that road? Perhaps they had been there longer than anyone else, but if that's the case then the street name must have been assigned sometime after 1950, when the Sitzenstocks still owned their old farm.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the 1950 Plat Book.

Or maybe "Sitzenstock" wouldn't fit onto a street sign.

Anyway, today our selection from the Lester Harms collection is an undated aerial view of the farm that gave Harms Road its name.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of E.H.

We are looking northwest. Lester's farm is in the foreground, with Harms Road running in front of it, horizontally across the picture. Beyond it you can see Colorado Street. The little collection of buildings and trees on the west side of Colorado is the farm of William and Louise Prochno. Their daughter, Mathilda, after losing her first husband (Noland White), would become Lester's second or third wife — I am really confused at this point over how many times Lester was married and to whom.

Today, Lester's former house and the big barn are still standing. Maybe some of the other outbuildings are, too, but I'm not sure. Nothing is left of the Prochno buildings.