Wild West copied frontier Florida

The living-history 2026 Great Florida
Cattle Drive continued rain or shine.
(Photo credit: USA Today 'The Florida
Pulse' documentary video.)

I often say pioneer Florida resembled the Wild West. Actually, the Wild West copied frontier Florida in a major way: cattle drives.

Florida cowmen and cow-women have been conducting cattle drives across the state for hundreds of years. The Spanish introduced what's called cracker cattle to the state in the early 1500s. Cattle drives in Texas and states farther West were latecomers. Yet, much historical lore plants such events firmly - and only - in those areas.

Wrong. Florida was a leading cattle-producing state by the mid-1800s, according to a University of Florida blog about the industry's history. We still rank among the top cattle-producing states in the nation.

Florida cattle drives of the past are no more, with one major exception: The Great Florida Cattle Drive. It's a living-history journey like no other. Using tools of the trade like those of 200 years ago, volunteers drive cattle across the state just as they did during the pioneer era. 

Organized by the all-volunteer Florida Cow Culture Preservation Committee, the reenactment takes place about once every five years. Florida's ongoing rapid development has hindered and altered the path of the trail, but the event's power and intent remain the same. The Great Florida Cattle Drive website says:

"This reenactment honors the state’s ranching heritage and educates attendees about the challenges and triumphs faced by early Florida cow hunters."

This year's seven-day drive covered 45 miles across 15 historic ranch lands in Okeechobee County. That's in the south central part of the state, which has a landscape that's alien to new coastal dwellers.

Cattle were driven as a herd, with cowmen and -women, horses and dogs making sure the cattle didn't wander into swamps, hammocks or sloughs. It was hard, hot, gritty work. It comes as close as a modern event can to what pioneers experienced so long ago. 

Maybe closer. I like to think that participants, come nighttime - seated around a campfire under a starry sky, relaxed after hours of intense outdoor labor, and surrounded by expanses of open land - made the leap between then and now. For a few minutes, maybe, minds and hearts stretched across time and touched.

Don't blow off hurricane warnings

Memoir tells of the 1928 hurricane

Well, we're back in another hurricane season. Not something to be taken lightly. 

Early settlers had their share of storms and the results could be frightening. Like today, it depended on the severity of the storm and its path. Two pioneer memoirs illustrate that in a vivid way.

The lighter remembrance was viewed through childhood eyes. Maria Davidson Pope wrote Remembrances of an Early Daytona Childhood fairly late in life - in her 60s or older. She was born in Daytona in 1874 and died at age 94 in 1969. 

She recounts with great detail the people and times of her youth. That includes periods of bad weather. As a child, she looked "forward to the fall gales with delight." These storms may or may not have been hurricanes. They were fierce enough to rattle windowpanes and blow boats loose from the wharves.

Flooding was a given on the low riverfront land. To lively children in a safe haven, that was an adventure. When the kitchen flooded, they played in the water, she wrote. "I remember paddling around on a small wooden table, turned upside down. Our great delight was to walk on stilts through the water. I so well remember the Puckett boys making me those stilts." 

Adults have different perspectives. In Memoirs of an Everglades Pioneer, Gertrude Petersen Winne shared dramatic memories of the horrible 1928 hurricane that tore through South Florida and killed thousands of people. 

There's a world of difference between a fall gale and that vicious 1928 storm, known as the Okeechobee Hurricane. An excellent fictional account is in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I'd long thought the underprivileged bore the brunt of that storm. Winne's memoir tells me otherwise. Rich and poor alike suffered. One difference is that more well-off residents may have had better access to weather forecasts. 

Winne and her family lived near the edge of Lake Okeechobee. Her husband was a fisherman in tune with the ways of wind and water. They heard the storm forecasts and watched conditions closely. "When the water in the creek rose 6 inches in 15 minutes, Ross [her husband] said, 'It's time to go.' "

They grabbed a few belongings and set out for West Palm Beach. They encouraged neighbors to do the same. Most declined. All - or almost all - who stayed behind died. The Winne family's three-story house was washed off its foundation and destroyed. 

The family almost didn't make it, themselves. The storm lashed into them before they reached West Palm. The car stalled out. When her husband opened the car door, the wind tore it back and bent the hinges. He shielded himself until a short break in the wind allowed him to get the door back on and get inside the vehicle. He'd also pushed the car into deep sand for stability and put rocks in front of the wheels. 

The couple and their children huddled inside the vehicle. They watched pine trees bend to the ground under the wind, saw roofs peel off buildings, and prayed that debris flying all around them wouldn't smash into the car. "During all this, the car surged and swayed like a mad ship but did not break loose from its mire of sand," Gertrude wrote.

During the eye of the storm, they got out and found that the paint on the car's exterior had been scoured off by flying sand. And heavy timbers had been forced into the asphalt pavement only a few feet behind the car. The family got the car started and managed to limp to safety in town, sometimes first getting out of the car and clearing the roadway of debris.

As soon as the storm ended, rescuers including Gertrude's husband headed out to the Everglades, she wrote. "The first truck to return from the Glades came in about 10 o'clock that night loaded with men, women, and children. Ross said if he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the look on those people's faces - utter hopelessness and despair; some of the people looked so blank and bewildered they had to be led by hand."  

Gertrude wasn't able to return home for over a month. Her husband helped nonstop with rescue efforts and with burying the dead. It was gruesome. "Death. Death and destruction lay everywhere," she wrote. "Some 2,000 or 3,000 people lay dead, scattered over the countryside..." 

If you live in a hurricane zone and a warning is issued, heed it. Please. We're a century past these pioneer experiences, but some things don't change. The destructive powers of hurricanes are one of them. 

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To learn more about the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, see the National Weather Service's memorial page at https://www.weather.gov/mfl/okeechobee

Dorian, go away

The National Weather Service has a memorial page to the
1928 Okeechobee hurricane. This photo is from that page.
It depicts rescue workers pulling bodies from the water.

I write with a heavy heart. Hurricane Dorian is a monster storm and it's aiming right for Florida. At least we have the benefit of minute-by-minute forecasts, advance warning, and time to prepare. People in Florida a hundred years ago had none of that. Thousands of lives were lost as a result.

Wikipedia says more than 10,000 people have died in Florida due to what the encyclopedia's entry calls tropical cyclones. There's no footnote referencing a source, so I can't verify the accuracy of the number. There's an interesting sentence that says most of those deaths occurred before hurricane hunter flights started in mid 20th century. It takes only a brief look at a handful of early 20th century Florida hurricanes to understand that statement.

From the book Florida's Hurricane History, 1998 edition, for example, you learn that hundreds died in a Keys hurricane in 1906 (page 90), the Great Miami hurricane of 1926 (page 126), and especially the Okeechobee storm - called the Okeechobee Flood - in 1928, when thousands lost their lives (page 127). For a vivid fictional retelling of that storm and flood, read Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She includes the hurricane as part of the narrative.

In Okeechobee, floodwaters caused the horrible tragedy. The hurricane caused the lake to rise so fiercely it rushed over the dikes meant to contain it (page 130). The ensuing flood destroyed entire communities. The National Weather Service has a memorial page about the Category 4 storm that provides a lot of detail. It notes that almost three-quarters of the those who died were people of color who worked as agricultural laborers.

Rushing and rising water remain major threats today when a hurricane strikes. I live 25 miles inland from the coast, at a "high" point (high land being a relative term in Florida). Where I live, we fear the winds, storm-spawned tornadoes, and fallen trees more than rising water. People who live on the waterfront have a different set of concerns. But we're all worried. I haven't given up hope that Dorian will veer off to the east and open water. But that wish seems to be fading. Stay safe, all.