Farm - Hopedale Airport

January 7, 1952

From 1940 to 1949, John and Margaret Byrne and family operated a small

dairy farm on

Hartford Avenue. The barn was on the

side of the

road, while the house and most

of the fields were on the Hopedale side.

The

three pictures at the top of this page are

from those days.

In 1949, they

moved to a larger farm in Littleton,

and the Hopedale place

was sold, first to

Varney Brothers and in 1952, to

. Draper then built

the

airport on the site, and it opened in January 1953.

Before

this land on Hartford Avenue was

an airport, it was a farm. In

the 1940s, the

farm belonged to the John and Margaret Byrne family.

Above and below - Peggy (Byrne) Cozzens in the 1940s.

c. 1950s

The three photos above were taken in 1988. In the one immediately above, Hartford

Avenue crosses diagonally across the lower quarter of the picture, with Route 140

going from the bottom, left of center, to the right. Buildings that can be seen in the

lower half include the one Hopedale rented some years ago as the Hartford Avenue

School, Community Bible Chapel, and Pop N Cork. The Hopedale Mart convenience

store at the corner of 140 and Hartford Avenue hadn't been built at that time.