Riverhead Town Councilman Ken Rothwell and his wife, Debra Rothwell, have purchased the B.J. Farms property, a preserved 107-acre horse farm in Jamesport that stretches from Main Road north, nearly to Sound Avenue.

Ken Rothwell said owning a horse farm has been the couple’s dream for decades. Both Rothwells said the purchase is a natural extension of their lifelong relationship with horses. Ken’s father ran Parr Meadows racetrack in Yaphank in the late 1970s and was active in thoroughbred racing. He said each of the children in his family had a horse of their own growing up. Debra, meanwhile, said she was raised upstate amid horse farms and dairy farms, with an uncle who managed quarter horse farms.

“So I was basically the barn rat,” she said. “I rode everybody else’s horse and always hoped for one of my own.”

The purchase had been in the works for roughly a year and a half, the Rothwells said, and required navigating an unusually intricate county review because the property’s development rights were sold around 1978, before Suffolk County adopted the  Chapter 8 farmland preservation framework that governs such properties today.

That early preserved status meant the Rothwells and county officials had to reconstruct old restrictions and compare them with what is now permitted under state Agriculture and Markets Law. Ken said the process required locating original deed covenants, researching old meetings and minutes, and incorporating every building and “every single fence post on the property” into a new survey.

Development rights purchased in 1979

The property was a potato farm until the late 1970s, when Robert W. Entenmann, grandson of the founder of Entenmann’s Inc., reportedly turned it into a thoroughbred race farm known as Entenmann’s Equestrian Facility.

In 1979, Suffolk County purchased the development rights to the farm from Frederick and Joseph Wick, according to the Rothwells’ application to the county. From there, title to the property was transferred in 1981 to Ducks Unlimited Inc., the world’s largest nonprofit dedicated to preserving wetlands and waterfowl habitats, then to Pase Farms the following year. Members of the Barker family purchased the farm in 1988, selling it to Brian and Jennifer Nixon in 1993.

The Nixons, who Ken Rothwell said are in their 80s, sold it to him and his wife.

The Rothwells had been boarding their own horses, Lotti and Lucky, there for about four years before the sale. Debra Rothwell said the property was already for sale when she and Ken first began boarding there.

New indoor riding arena

The couple said they intend to preserve the core operation already in place, including the six-member staff and general level of care, and build a new indoor riding arena later this year. Debra praised what the previous owners had built.

“The Nixons were doing a phenomenal business caring for this beautiful piece of property,” she said. “So we’re going to continue that and offer boarding, as they did,” with a few practical upgrades to the boarding operation, including a Wi-Fi system and camera access that would allow owners to check on their horses at any time.

“If you go away, I’ll be sending you videos and pictures of your horses, because that’s always important to me when I’m not here.”

Ken said the current indoor arena used by riders sits on an adjacent parcel they do not own and is too small for riders to lay out a full jumping or dressage course. The new one, he said, will be significantly larger and designed to allow year-round training.

“With the larger indoor riding arena, the competitive size ring will fit inside it,” he said.

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Ken said the arena will include a viewing stand where trainers, coaches, family members and photographers can watch riders work, and it will sit adjacent to the outdoor riding arena already in place. He said construction on the new arena will likely begin in the fall.

He said another of the farm’s priorities will be improving footing — the carefully graded riding and track surfaces that can vary depending on a horse’s discipline. The property includes a full-size trotters track, and Ken said they have consulted experts to help improve grading so the footing more closely resembles what horses experience at tracks such as Yonkers and Monticello Raceway.

“We’re one of the few farms that have a full-size trotters track,” he said.

‘Thunder Road Stables’

The farm now has 50 horses, after a new racehorse arrived over the weekend, Debra said. Several harness race trainers already use part of the barns and the lower part of the property, training on the track before taking horses to the races.

The couple has been married for more than 30 years, Ken said, and horseback riding has long been one of their shared passions. He recalled trips riding through Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Tetons and the sand dunes of Colorado.

“Forget the beaches,” Debra said. “I’ll take a horse up in the mountains any day.”

The farm’s name, Thunder Road Stables, was Debra’s idea. Ken said the couple kicked around different possible names when they went into contract, but he knew the Bruce Springsteen song “Thunder Road” had long been his wife’s favorite.

Debra said the song spoke to her because of its image of escape and arrival.

“To me, it speaks of you breaking out of a mundane situation and finding the promised land — which is actually quoted in the song,” she said. “And to me, this farm is my Promised Land.”

Debra said she had lost her father about 14 years ago and was having an especially sad day when she came across an article describing a Native American belief that when you lose your father, “he comes back as the thunder.”

“And I’m like, ‘Oh, well, that’s it,’” she said. “I have to name it.”

The farm reportedly sold for $3.5 million.