Until Tuesday afternoon I hadn't been to Samuell Farm in almost a decade. It's likely you've never been at all: Two years ago, as part of its comprehensive plan, Dallas' Park and Recreation Department conducted a survey in which half the respondents said they'd never even heard of the place. Probably because it's about 600 acres of blissfully not much — old barns, fishing ponds, tall grass. And it's in Mesquite.

The farm off U.S. Highway 80 and Belt Line Road looks much as it did in 1937, when physician William Worthington Samuell died at the age of 59 and bequeathed to Dallas some 900 acres and money and stocks to invest in their future care. He intended all of it to be used solely for "park purposes," per the 27-word will he scribbled on a prescription pad. He gave one other caveat: "not to be sold." Which is how we wound up with, among so many others, Samuell-Grand in East Dallas and Samuell Beamount in the Cedars; Samuell Boulevard and W.W. Samuell High School, too, for that matter.

Then there is Samuell Farm, where Hugh Brooks asked me to meet him this week for our once-every-few-years chat that might well be titled, "Now Look at How The City of Dallas is Violating W.W. Samuell's Will." That's how the oil-and-gas attorney has seen it for the last 15 years. When he calls I pick up, because he spent four years running the farm — and even helped stop the sale of the place when city officials weighed parting with it eight years ago.

Protecting this place is Brooks' calling, for which we should be grateful. As far as he's concerned, Samuell wanted the farm to be nothing more than a quiet, accessible gathering spot where "people are drawn to the simplicity and serenity."

"Samuell thought being able to get out of town and sit by a pond and picnic was a great gift," said Brooks as we stood in the shade near locked-up bathrooms that don't work and the gated welcome center. "I think it still is."

Hugh Brooks, director of Friends of the Farm, is once again concerned Dallas isn't doing right by Samuell Farm. (Carly Geraci/Staff Photographer)

Last week, Brooks discovered a 35-foot-tall pile of dirt on the property, which sent him scouring for answers. He soon discovered the Park Board agreed earlier this year to let the Dallas Zoo build a five-acre whooping crane "breeding facility" on the 300-acre side of the farm south of 80. The board also agreed to limit public access to that part of the farm.

I told Brooks that five cordoned-off acres doesn't seem like much — a wee fraction of its acreage. But it has set him off. Again.

"This is about getting the camel's nose under the tent," he said. "It's about getting the zoo out here. And next thing you know, they'll need another 15 acres. And then another."

Willis Winters, head of the park department, can't believe this became contentious.

"It's hard to believe W.W. Samuell would not think an endangered-species conservation center would not be a good use for a tiny portion of the property," he said this week. "That's entirely in keeping with the concept of a farm -- wildlife conservation, especially Texas wildlife."

Hard to argue with that. Especially since the farm sits in limbo — outside the city limits, untouchable.

But I get Brooks' concerns, too. The city, which mows and picks up trash out here but that's it, has seldom done right by the farm.

Twenty years ago, Samuell Farm was a money-making destination for Dallas, which kept staffers and animals on the property, welcomed 24,000 school children each year and hosted Civil War and Wild West re-enactments (which proved to be sketchy, shocking no one). But it was also a horror show: Illegal garbage dumps were scattered all over the farmland, and the animals were dying, either from malnutrition or abuse. The feds fined Dallas $20,000. It should have been more.

It was this pile of dirt that got Brooks interested in the latest doings at Samuell Farm. City officials say it was excavated from aquatic-center sites and will be used for the Dallas Zoo's whooping crane breeding facility. (Robert Wilonsky/Staff)

By 2003, the city had had enough: Mesquite approached Dallas about planting 40 soccer fields and 1,600 parking spaces, and Dallas said sure, to be rid of the pastoral headache. But Brooks intervened, and a year later, after a dust-up with the city, his Friends of Samuell Farm took over.

Using grant money and foundations' funds, they planted an enormous garden and sent the produce to Central Dallas Ministries and other needful organizations. They built out a trail system, planting markers the city has since yanked out, and hosted cross-country races. And they restored historic barns the city left to molder.

But Brooks and Winters' predecessor didn't get along. Their relationship so soured that the first time I spoke with Brooks in 2009, he had just ratted out the city to the state's attorney general, who agreed with Brooks that the city wasn't living up to Samuell's dying wishes. A year later, the state intervened when the city considered selling the land.

This is the house W.W. Samuell was building when he died in 1937. (Robert Wilonsky/Staff)

Winters said the park department is considering looking for an outsider to manage the farm, because "it's hard to put resources into a property so far outside the city that Dallas citizens don't use." Brooks said he may yet ask the AG's office to intervene. Again.

"Nobody knows what's going on out here," he said. "And now the zoo's coming. Every time the city sees a round hole, it starts carving square pegs."

I expect another ugly fight, and over a place so beautiful.