I never left, and I still own it as much as I did when I spent more time there. It was built and owned by a builder from Springfield. The fellow who owned it used to spend a lot of time down there when his family was young. But as the years passed he was spending less time there.
There was some vandalism while he wasn't there so he had an aquaintance of his serve as caretaker of the place for a good number of years. She was Jake's mommy, and allowed a friend and I to spend many weekends there. We would use it as the base for many of our pineland explorations.
I assume the owner felt that the time had come to free up his money and sold it to the Conservancy.