Hometown Rankin - June & July 2017

A Sprawling
Lakeland Drive
Susan Marquez
As told by Jessica Lay
With close to 60,000
vehicles driving on Lakeland
Drive each day, it’s hard to
believe that it was once beautiful
pastureland for dairy cows. Jessica
Lay remembers, because her father
ran the dairy farm that once stood
where River Oaks Hospital is
today. “We moved there when
I was five-years-old,” Lay recalls.
“I was entering the first grade.
I went to school in Pearl.”
Her father purchased the land in
1944 for $35 an acre – a pretty hefty
sum in those days. “People told my father he’d never be able to
afford that land, but he said that he’d pay for it selling milk.
And he did just that.” The family moved to Rankin County
from the Forest Hill area of Jackson. At that time, Lay’s father
was delivering milk in glass bottles on the doorsteps of families
all over South Jackson. “People would put their milk money in
a jar for my father to pick up when he delivered the milk. It was
a different time back then. People were honest.”
The first idea that something
would happen where Lakeland
Drive is today is when Leland
Speed was fishing with Lay’s
uncle. “Mr. Speed told my uncle
that a road was going through
the area. He said the land would
be worth a million dollars
someday.” Gus Primos did a
good bit of the work, partnering
with the Lay family to sell
and develop some of the land. “Gus had the
money and we had the land. It was a great partnership!”
At the time, Lakeland Drive ended just shy of the Pearl River.
“The Stocketts had a horse barn there,” Lay recalls. When the
road was brought through, Gus Primos wanted to build a
school. “Jackson Prep now sits on the site where our hayfield
used to be.” Lay recalls there was an old tenant house with a
cistern behind it on the back of the property. “I used to ride my
horse back there, and all the way to the Pearl River.”
74 • June 2017