LOCAL WISDOM

There were the cute Bonanza brothers, with their highjinks and strong family bonds. There was Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon, with his stiff spine and strong moral character. (But what were he and Miss Kitty really up to?) There was the seemingly endless string of spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood squinting into what was, apparently, an Italian sunset. Even a president-to-be galloped around Death Valley on our little screens.

Back then, it seemed the world was simple: white hats and black hats, cowboys and Indians. For several years my big dilemma was whether to ask for a cowgirl or Indian outfit for Christmas. I must have gotten at least one of each over time because I remember running around the backyard wearing both a feathered headdress and a pair of cowboy boots on a day when I just couldn’t make the choice about which side to join.

Still, most days, the cowboy side won out for me. Sharpshooter Annie Oakley was one of my idols. I remember wanting to sleep with my cap pistol holstered around my waist. While I knew Annie hung out with Sitting Bull, it was the cowboys who had those six shooters. Plus there was just something appealing the way they said "Ma’am" when they touched the brims of their Stetsons. And I don’t even want to mention those tight pants.

But I grew up in the land of swamps, marshes, beaches and palm trees. It wasn’t until I was well into my 20s that I realized cowboys have existed in Florida as long as they have existed anywhere else in the United States.

While Western cowboys were tossing lassoes over the heads of little doggies, Florida cowboys, riding sturdy horses descended from those left by the Spaniards, were plowing through swamps, using their whips to round up free-roaming, long-horned cattle. Shortly after the Civil War, Florida cowboys were driving cattle out of the swamps to the port of Tampa, where they were loaded onto ships and exported to Cuba.

Over time, fences became part of the landscape and some of the more entrepreneurial cowhands started accumulating large chunks of acreage. While the cattle drive as they knew it disappeared, the cowboys remained, wrangling livestock within barbed wire boundaries.

During those years, the hardy but lean cracker cow began to disappear, replaced with stock infused with heat-resistant Brahman cattle blood. And Florida grew to become one of the biggest beef producing states in the country.

But in recent years, homes by the thousands have been popping up on Florida’s former range land. And many local ranchers, sensing the end of an era, have sold their land to developers, packed up their ponies and the proceeds and, literally, headed off into the sunset—to Texas and Oklahoma where the land is less dear and they can still do what they know best.

It seemed that a way of life was destined to disappear completely from the Sunshine State. But deep down in Southwest Florida, on the edge of the Everglades, there is at least one place where local cowboys have been able to keep their jobs, even as the landowners sold off the land to development.

A year ago, Developer Syd Kitson bought the 91,000-acre Babcock Ranch from a family that had owned the land for nearly 100 years. Then, in a pre-arranged agreement, he immediately sold 74,000 of the 91,000 acres to the State of Florida and Lee County, which pledged to protect it from development and keep the working ranch as a living history example.

Even today, there are cowboys rounding up strays from the Telegraph swamp. I’ve seen the pictures. And, let me tell you, they put Little Joe to shame.

Teresa Burney is a contributing editor of Big Builder magazine and a columnist for Orlando Homebuyer.