Ida Huddleston has lived on the same stretch of farmland outside Maysville, Kentucky, since she was 16 years old. She and her late husband built a log home on the property, raised their children there, and worked the soil across six decades of marriage. The family now owns approximately 1,200 acres, and multiple generations continue to reside on the land.

Last spring, an unidentified company described only as a major artificial intelligence firm came looking to acquire a portion of the property, according to WKRC Local 12. The company approached dozens of landowners in Mason County with the aim of purchasing roughly half of the Huddleston family's land for a proposed data center campus. The land rush reflects a nationwide push by technology companies to secure sites for AI infrastructure, which requires vast amounts of acreage, electricity, and water for cooling as demand for generative AI services scales rapidly.

Huddleston, 82, was offered approximately $60,000 per acre for her 71 acres — totaling more than $4 million. Her daughter, Delsia Bare, 54, was offered $48,000 per acre for her 463 acres, which would have amounted to a payout exceeding $22 million. Together, the family's combined offer surpassed $26 million — far above the roughly $6,000-per-acre going rate for farmland in Mason County. Such premiums have become common in regions targeted for data center development, where companies are willing to pay well above agricultural valuations to secure sites with access to power grids and fiber infrastructure.

Bare acknowledged that she briefly signed a contract to sell. She said fear played a role in her decision, particularly concerns about whether the company might invoke eminent domain and the pressure from developers who refused to identify themselves. However, the deal did not sit right with her, and both she and her mother ultimately withdrew, Bare told People in an exclusive interview.

"Money couldn't move what all I've got put in place here," Huddleston told People. "So I just might as well stay and fight it out right where I'm at."

Both women have since become outspoken opponents of the project, telling local media outlets they do not believe the promised jobs and economic benefits will materialize. Huddleston has called the offer a scam. She and Bare cite reports of water shortages and groundwater contamination near data centers in other parts of the country as reasons to preserve the land as it is. Data centers are among the most water-intensive industrial facilities, with a single large campus capable of consuming millions of gallons per day for cooling — a concern that has fueled opposition in communities from Virginia's Loudoun County to Arizona and the Netherlands.

"You can't get food out of a data center," Huddleston said in her People interview. "And everything coming out of the data center is going to be poison and destructive."

Bare, who ultimately never sold, says her connection to the property goes far deeper than financial gain.

"The more money you have, the more problems you have," she told People. "It never went through my mind that this was a Cinderella story. I never wanted to leave my land."

The Project Moves Forward Without Them

The Huddleston family's refusal has not halted the project. The company has instead assembled land from other property owners who agreed to sell. A zoning request was filed to reclassify nearly 28 agricultural parcels — more than 2,000 acres in total — and the local planning commission has since approved the rezoning, according to Local 12. If constructed, the data center would be situated adjacent to the Huddleston farm rather than on it.

County officials have stated that the project would generate hundreds of full-time jobs and well over a thousand construction jobs. Huddleston remains unconvinced.

"I don't want your money, I don't need your money," she told LEX 18. "But I do feel sorry for everybody around us."

The Huddlestons' standoff is part of a much broader conflict unfolding across rural America. Residents of Saline Township, Michigan, voted down an OpenAI–Oracle data center proposal, only to see construction begin weeks later. Opposition to data centers has surfaced in angry town halls nationwide, and the fight has become a cross-partisan political issue in Texas, where farmers and ranchers are pushing back against Big Tech's pursuit of inexpensive land and power. Major technology companies including Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have collectively committed hundreds of billions of dollars to AI data center expansion, intensifying competition for suitable sites and putting increasing pressure on rural communities to accommodate industrial-scale facilities.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.