Open-Range Ranching in Southern Florida

Open-range ranching persisted in peninsular Florida from the 1830s until after World War II because of a separate cattle market in Cuba, the virtual absence of competition from other forms of land use, and forces intrinsic within the industry, including a distinctive type of cow, endemic cattle tick fever, and a fire-conditioned range. The decline of the Cuban market in the 1920s forced the ranchers to seek a place in the domestic market, but the “Florida cow'’did not produce acceptable beef. Introduction of modern beef breeds required antecedent eradication of cattle tick fever, parcelling of the range and acquisition of land titles, fencing, and replacement of parts of the native range with improved forages. Florida's open range officially ended in 1949, and the introduction of modern beef breeds has been rapid; since 1950 growing numbers of Florida cattle of progressively better quality have moved into the national market. Notes 1 The thirty-county area includes fifty-one percent of Florida's land; in 1964 it contained sixty-eight percent of the state's beef cattle, produced sixty-nine percent of all cattle sold, and included slightly more than sixty-seven percent of the state's pasture land of all types. The area corresponds to boundaries of statistical reporting districts; Florida Agricultural Statistics: Livestock Summary, 1968 (Orlando: Florida Crop and Livestock Reporting Service, 1969), p. 1. The Service has used bridge-points on the Suwanee River to tally shipments of cattle from the peninsula. Ninety-two percent of Florida's unimproved rangeland and sixty percent of its grazed forest acreage were in the thirty-county area in 1968. By census definition (which was restrictive), sixty-four percent of all Florida ranches were in the study area in 1964; United States Census of Agriculture: 1964, Vol. 1, Part 49, Florida, County Tables 1, 6, 10, and 11. 2 Among those who have examined ranching in the eastern United States are Gary S. Dunbar, “Colonial Carolina Cowpens,”Agricultural History, Vol. 35 (1961), pp. 125 30; Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1933), Vol. I, pp. 203–06, and Vol. II, pp. 835–37; Terry G. Jordan, “The Origin of Anglo-American Cattle Ranching in Texas,”Economic Geography, Vol. 45 (1969), pp. 163 87; Frank Owsley, “The Pattern of Migration and Settlement on the Southern Frontier,”Journal of Southern History, Vol. 11 (1945), pp. 147 76; Paul C. Henlein, Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley, 1783-1860 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959); and Rodney C. Loehr, “Moving Back From the Atlantic Seaboard,”Agricultural History, Vol. 17 (1943), pp. 90 96. 3 John H. Davis, Jr., The Natural Features of Southern Florida, Bulletin 25 (Tallahassee: Florida Geological Survey, 1943), pp. 156–57. 4 Sidney W. Martin, “The Public Domain in Territorial Florida,”Journal of Southern History, Vol. 10 (1944), p. 175. 5 Charlton W. Tebeau, Florida's Last Frontier: The History of Collier County (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1966), p. 243. 6 George H. Dacy, Four Centuries of Florida Ranching (St. Louis: Britt Publishing Co., 1940), p. 61. 7 In addition to Dacy, op. cit., footnote 6, and Tebeau, op. cit., footnote 5, open range ranching in south Florida has been examined by J. A. Hanna and K. A. Hanna, Lake Okeechobee: Wellspring of the Everglades (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948); George M. Barbour, Florida for Tourists, Invalids and Settlers (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1882); William H. Black, “The Development of the Beef Cattle Industry in Florida,”Addresses Before the Eighth Annual Meeting of County Agents and the Fourth Annual Cattle Round Up, Bulletin 23 (Gainesville: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, 1920), pp. 38–42; K. A. Hanna, Florida: Land of Change (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949); Stetson Kennedy, Palmetto Country (New York: Duall, Sloan, and Pearce, 1942); Roland M. Harper, Geography of Central Florida, Thirteenth Annual Report (Tallahassee: Florida Geological Survey, 1921); Roland M. Harper, Natural Resources of Southeen Florida, Eighteenth Annual Report (Tallahassee: Florida Geological Survey, 1927); Frederic Remington, “Cracker Cowboys of Florida,”Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 91 (1895), pp. 339 45; and Fred Lykes, “A Pioneer Florida Family,”Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 30 (1951), pp. 128 29. 8 Dacy, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 68–69. These dogs also protected cowboys from attacks by feral hogs. A good cow dog will divert the charge of a sow out of a thicket where she has a litter of piglets. The cattlemen feared feral hogs as much as the rattlesnakes which infested the range. 9 Roger T. Parrott, “A Study of Wiregrass With Particular Reference to Fire,” unpublished master's thesis, Duke University, 1967, pp. 105–07. The pinewiregrass complex also has been examined by Joe A. Edminston, “The Ecology of the Florida Pine Flatwoods, Some Ecological Aspects of Pond Pines,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 1963, pp. 1, 7, 27, and 93–95; Kenneth H. Garren, “Effects of Fire on Vegetation of the Southeastern United States,”Botanical Review, Vol. 9 (1943), p. 646; H. L. Stoddard, Sr., “Use of Fire in Pine Forest and Game Lands of the Deep Southeast,”Proceedings, First Annual Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference, 1962 (Tallahassee: Tall Timbers Research Station, 1962), pp. 31–42; and Merle C. Prunty, Jr., “Some Geographic Views of the Role of Fire in Settlement Processes in the South,”Proceedings, Fourth Annual Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference, 1965 (Tallahassee: Tall Timbers Research Station, 1965), pp. 161–68. 10 The vegetative cover of the Flatwoods is essentially as it was twelve million years ago, and traces of fire-resistant plants dating from the Eocene have been discovered; Edmiston, op. cit., footnote 9, p. 1. Ground fires were associated with early cattle production; Charles Vignoles, Observations Upon the Floridas (New York: E. Bliss and E. White, 1823), p. 76. In the first year after burning the forage yields were more than double those from unburned areas of wiregrass; Parrott, op. cit., footnote 9, pp. 105–07. Almost a century ago the Florida Legislature legalized the use of ground fires on rangelands between 15 February and 31 March of each year (Laws of Florida, 1879, Chapter 3141), but these time limits rarely have been enforced. 11 H. L. Stoddard, Sr., footnote 9, pp. 32–35. The traditional ranchers considered ground fires necessary to remove accumulations of dry dead grass and undesirable plants which competed with wiregrass, and to provide green forage for winter grazing. Ash from the burned material provided small but quickly available amounts of fertilizer. Regrowth was rapid; cattle usually were grazing the fresh tender grass within four to six weeks after a fire. Stoddard, who was reared in the Florida rangelands, indicated that areas adjacent to homesites were burned annually to remove the “rough” that could provide hiding places for snakes, bears, bobcats, and other undesirable animals, to reduce the incidence of insects such as ticks and red mites, and to protect the homesites and cowpens from the ubiquitous rangeland fires. 12 F. B. Smith et al., Principal Soils Areas of Florida, Bulletin 717 (Gainesville: Florida Agricultural Experiment Stations, 1967), pp. 34–38. 13 Cattle and ranching in Florida during the Spanish and British periods have been discussed by T. Frederick Davis, “History of Juan Ponce de Leon's Voyages into Florida,”Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 14 (1935), pp. 7 70; Charles W. Arnade, “Cattle Raising in Spanish Florida 1513-1763,”Agricultural History, Vol. 35 (1961), pp. 116 24; Verne E. Chatelain, The Defense of Spanish Florida, 1565-1764, Publication 511 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1941); Colonial Records of Spanish Florida, II: 1566-1580, translated by Jeanette T. Connor (Deland, Florida: The Florida State Historical Society, 1930); Carita Doggett Corse, “Denys Rolles and Rollestown: A Pioneer for Utopia,”Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 7 (1928), pp. 115 34; Carita Doggett, Dr. Andrew Turnbull and the New Smyrna Colony (Jacksonville: The Drew Press, 1919); James G. Forbes, Sketches, Historical and Topographical of the Floridas, More Particularly of East Florida (New York: C. S. Van Winkle, 1821; facsimile reproduction, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1964); and Edgar L. Pennington, “East Florida in the American Revolution, 1775-1778,”Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 9 (1930), pp. 24 46. 14 G. T. Surface, “Geographic Influence on the Economic History of Virginia,”Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 39 (1907), p. 400. 15 Gray, op. cit., footnote 2, Vol. I, p. 204. 16 Gray, op. cit., footnote 2, Vol. I, p. 204. 17 Cooper Curtice, “On the Extermination of the Cattle-Tick and The Disease Spread By It,”The Journal of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Archives, Vol. 17 (1896), p. 652. 18 Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935) p. 151. The first Shorthorns were imported in Virginia in 1783. Henry clay of Kentucky is credited with importing the first Herefords in 1817. The first Angus cattle were imported in 1873 by a British-owned ranch near Victoria, Kansas. 19 “Florida Spurs Its Cattle Industry,”Investor's Reader, May 5, 1954, p. 2. Vance, footnote 18, p. 164–65, said that selection of the larger bulls over a period of many years for export to Cuba for bullfighting had a marked effect on the size and quality of Florida cattle. 20 Hanna and Hanna, op. cit., footnote 7, pp. 84–85; and Dacy, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 60–61. 21 Black, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 41. 22 T. J. Cunha and G. N. Rhodes, eds., Beef Cattle In Florida, Bulletin 28 (Tallahassee: Florida Department of Agriculture, 1966), pp. 5–8. 23 Kennedy, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 224; and Dacy, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 58. 24 The Florida Cattleman, Vol. 7 (1943), p. 13; and interview with Mr. O. L. Partin, Kissimmee, Florida, August, 1969. The first large shipments of Texas Brahman cattle have been attributed to the efforts of Mr. B. F. Lester, a cattle broker who lived in Montgomery, Alabama. These cattle were marketed in Osceola County, primarily in the Kissimmee valley, during World War I. 25 Artist-sculptor and keen student of America's “Old West,” Frederic Remington clearly recognized Florida's open-range lifestyle and its many similarities to western ranching in the 1880s; Remington, op. cit., footnote 7, pp. 339–45. Florida ranching met all of the criteria established to identify ranching by Anglo-Americans in Texas; Jordan, op. cit., footnote 2, pp. 163–87. 26 The significance of the gradual decline in Cuban purchases emerged from interviews with twenty older Florida cattlemen who were active ranchers before 1925. They all indicated that their cattle were “in surplus” on the local Florida market as Cuban purchases declined. Several men generously permitted inspection of old herd books and sales records in order to underscore their statements. Hanna and Hanna, op. cit., footnote 7, pp. 84–85, made the same point. 27 J. W. Bailey, Veterinary Handbook For Cattle-men (New York: Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 1972), pp. 166–69. Curtice, op. cit., footnote 17, p. 649, listed names by which the disease has been known: “Southern cattle fever, splenetic fever, Spanish cattle fever, Texas cattle fever, Carolina cattle distemper, Mexican or Indian cattle disease, distemper, bloody murrain, red-water, haematuria, splenic fever, haemoglobinuria, tick fever, acclimatization fever.” 28 T. Smith and F. L. Kilborne, Nature, Causation and Prevention of Texas or Southern Cattle Fever, Bureau of Animal Industry Bulletin No. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1893), pp. 86–89. 29 Laws of Florida, 1923, Chapter 9201. The program in Florida was a continuation of the Federal tick fever eradication program initiated by the Congress in 1906 and directed by the Bureau of Animal Industries, United States Department of Agriculture. 30 Ranchers were charged three cents per head for dipping; Laws of Florida, 1923, Chapter 9201. 31 The program was administered by the Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board, whose minutes provide a wealth of information about it. 32 The American white-tailed deer is immune to bovine piroplasmosis but can serve as a host for the tick. A cow that has recovered from tick fever is “immune,” but she carries the protozoan parasite in her bloodstream the rest of her life. Seed ticks hatched from a female who spent her life on a deer do not carry Babesia bigemina but are infested immediately if they attach themselves to an “immune” cow. The progeny of these ticks can infect any cow. Virtually all of the older cattle on the range were “immune” carriers of piroplasmosis. As long as ticks could be reintroduced from the deer population, the investigators believed transmission of the disease from one generation of cattle to the next could not be stopped. The shorter life span and greater reproduction rate of B. microplus were additional complications; J. V. Knapp, “Existence of Tropical Variety of Cattle Fever Tick Complicates Tick Eradication in Florida,”Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Vol. 96 (1940), pp. 607 08; and J. E. Shillinger, “Deer in Relation to Fever Tick Eradication in Florida,”Transactions, Third North American Wildlife Conference (1938), pp. 882–85. 33 Dacy, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 279; Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board, Minutes, 1936 (Tallahassee, Florida: Office of the State Veterinarian, 1937). 34 Florida State Supreme Court, Hancock vs. Karel, March 13, 1937; Laws of Florida 1937, Special Acts, Chapters 18571, 18744, 18576 and 18548; Florida State Supreme Court, Sheets vs. Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board, January 8, 1938; and Florida State Supreme Court, Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board vs. Sheets (Rehearing), February 4, 1938. 35 Letter report of Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier to United States Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, January 15, 1940, as reported in Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board, Minutes, 1940. 36 Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board, Minutes, 1944. An estimated 20,000 deer were slaughtered during the program, but the depleted areas were restocked with tick-free deer from other states. 37 Harper, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 141; Editorial, “Cattle on the Highways Again,”The Florida Cattleman, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1936), p. 16; and P. E. Williams, “Highway Fencing—A Duty of the Road Department,”The Florida Cattleman, Vol. 1, No. 6 (1937), p. 5. 38 Laws of Florida, 1949, Chapter 25236. The law required the fencing of property frontages along public roads. 39 Throughout this section, unless otherwise indicated, our information came from interviews with twenty older cattlemen who were ranchers in the area before 1925. During 1969 and 1970 we conducted 101 in-depth interviews with owners and managers of cattle-producing properties throughout the peninsula. These men were selected with the assistance of the editorial staff of The Florida Cattleman, officials of the Florida Cattleman's Association, and Agricultural Extension Service representatives. They included representatives of 1) all parts of the peninsula north of the Everglades; 2) landholdings from large (more than 100,000 acres or 40,500 ha) to small (2–3,000 acres or 810–1,215 ha); 3) native range and improved pasture operations at all size levels; 4) younger, middle-aged, and older ranchers; and 5) owner-operators and professional managers. The 101 landholdings contained 2,642,262 acres (1,070,100 ha), were seven percent of the cattle-producing landownerships in south Florida, and occupied 14.8 percent of the area. 40 F. C. Bishop, E. W. Laoke, and D. C. Parman, Screwworms and Other Maggots Affecting Animals, Farmers Bulletin 857 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1926), p. 1; D. A. Sanders and A. N. Tissot, The Screwworm Fly in Florida, Bulletin 465 (Gainesville: Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, 1934); W. G. Bruce and W. G. Sheely, Screwworms in Florida, Bulletin 86 (Gainesville: Florida Agricultural Extension Service, 1936), pp. 3–4 and 18–19; and E. Swanson and O. F. Goen, Screwworms and Their Control, Circular 107 (Gainesville: Florida Agricultural Extension Service, 1952), pp. 2–3. The extent to which the deer population suffered from the screwworm is not known, but the losses among fawns born in thickets and swamps must have been enormous; Bruce and Sheely reported that navel infections of calves represented seventy-five percent of all screwworm cases during the springs and summers of 1935 and 1936. 41 The screwworm was eradicated in the Southeast in 1958 and 1959 by a Federally sponsored program which sterilized hordes of male flies by irradiating them and then releasing them in saturation numbers to mate with females who laid sterile eggs and died; personal correspondence with Donald L. Williams, Acting Senior Staff Veterinarian, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Animal Health Division, Hyattsville, Maryland, November 9, 1970. 42 Laws of Florida, 1937, Chapter 18296. 43 Kennedy, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 224; and Dacy, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 58. 44 L. T. Herring, “Texas Tick Fever and Brahma Cattle,”American Veterinary Review, Vol. 38 (1911), pp. 756 61; and Charles R. Koch, “50th Anniversary For A Centuries Old Breed,”Livestock Breeder Journal, Vol. 17 (1974), pp. 26 34. Herring, Koch, and others believed the Brahman breed is more resistant to tick fever than others. The American Brahman breed was developed from at least four strains of Indian cattle imported between 1854 and 1926. Tick fever is endemic on the Indian subcontinent. The contention that Brahman cattle have greater resistance to the disease than other breeds because of centuries of exposure to it has considerable evidence to support it. 45 We found that all of the ranchers were using some Brahman or Brahman-related bulls for commercial production, and that ninety percent also were using bulls of European breeds for cross-breeding. 46 H. O. Lathrop, “Distribution and Development of the Beef Cattle Industry of Florida,”The Journal of Geography, Vol. 50 (1951), pp. 139 42. 47 Isadore L. Dorick, “The Effect of High Temperature and Humidity Upon Cattle,”Acta Tropicana, Vol. 6 (1949), pp. 221 41. 48 Gifford N. Rhodes, “Cow Count Up For Five Years,”The Florida Cattleman, Vol. 34 (1970), p. 42. 49 T. J. Cunha and G. N. Rhodes, Annual Fruit and Vegetable Report, 1952 (Jacksonville: Florida Marketing Bureau, 1953); and Florida Agricultural Statistics: Livestock Summary, 1969-70) (Orlando: Florida Crop and Livestock Reporting Service, 1970), p. 6

Agricultural economics · Agricultural science · Agriculture · Agroforestry · Archaeology · Beef Cattle · Biology · Fencing · Geography · Livestock · Pasture · Peninsula · Range (aeronautics) · Rangeland · American History and Culture · Cuban History and Society · Engineering · Forestry

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