PORUM — This year’s Muskogee County Cattlemen’s Association picnic was different than in years past.

Not only did they combine their event with cattlemen from McIntosh and Haskell counties, where they met used to be the site of a large underground marijuana growing operation.

Today, the old drug farm between Warner and Porum is officially the Harding Ranch and Research Station. There are herds of Angus, Simmental, Santa Gertrudis and commercial cattle at the north end and recently mown hay meadows on the hilltop at the south end.

In between, there are serene lakes, a huge picnic pavilion and restroom facilities. There’s also a large wetlands where hundreds of waterfowl make their winter home.

The 1,316 acres is now owned by Connors State College and has been developed with funding from Union Pacific Railroad, Ducks Unlimited, the Audubon Society, a fence wire company and other groups.

While it is named for Dr. Gary Harding, who was with the college 28 years before retiring as dean of agriculture, people still refer to it as the drug farm.

It has been 18 years since authorities flying over the property spotted marijuana growing in the woods surrounding those hilltop haymeadows.

They swooped in on the property and accidentally discovered two sophisticated underground marijuana growing operations.

The property owner and his son were charged and convicted. The son went to prison, but about 500 area residents signed a petition asking that the property owner, Marvin Smith, 55, get a suspended sentence.

And he did.

Harding recalls having visited with Smith on one occasion before his arrest and never suspected a thing.

Smith was removing dirt from the hillside near where the outdoor pavillion now stands, Harding recalls. Smith told Harding he was building an underground house. The front had caved in and Smith was in the process of bracing it up.

Harding didn’t think anything of it because Smith was “brilliant,” Harding said.

That’s where officers discovered one of the two underground hydroponic marijuana gardens.

Smith used the dirt removed from the hillside to build a fishing peninsula in the six-acre lake just outside.