Edited by Spessard Stone from an article by George W. Hendry, which was originally printed in the Fort Meade, Florida Leader of May 1, 1913. It depicts this region mainly in its pristine state.
Editor of Fort Meade Leader:
Perhaps a brief sketch of Fort Meade in its early history might prove interesting to many of your readers.
In August, 1853, I landed in Fort Meade, which was then occupied by a company of regular soldiers with not an inhabitant from Bartow to Punta Gorda within fifteen miles of "Pease Creek," as it was then called and spelled by the government officials in their official papers.
It was one vast wilderness with no human being to occupy, or see, its beauties and grandeur, as the Seminoles occupied the more central portion of the peninsula--the Arbuckle and Kissimmee sections.
Hence game was unmolested, and the whole face of the earth was alive with deer, turkeys, bears, wolves and other wild beasts; a few panthers, catamounts and other smaller animals, with the lakes, streams and all bodies of water teeming with fish of many species, mostly bass, drum and channel catfish.Wild honey in great abundance, and the elements alive with fowls, whooping cranes, herons, egrets, gannets, pink curfews, limpkins, ducks and thousands of other varieties that would fill a page to enumerate.
The range was in its pristine glory, no herds of cattle having grazed on it.
But now, our beautiful plumed birds are gone. The game is practically exhausted, the range broken, the streams fished out, with a great change everywhere.The most of our country was a hotbed of malaria, chills and ague, but the stockmen with their torches and vast herds of cattle penetrated very section until many sections then uninhab- ited were reclaimed through natural drainage and burning until it was made possible for healthy and comfortable habitation.
Not a public highway was in Polk County except such as Uncle Sam had opened to transport supplies in the various Indian wars. This writer aided in opening the first and only road leading from Fort Meade to Bartow and assisted in erecting the first building around Fort Meade, which was erected at what is now Pembroke.
Capt. F. A. Hendry, of Fort Myers, settled one and one-half miles north of Fort Meade, while he and the late Louis Lanier were the first two men to put their herds of cattle east of "Pease Creek."
There were quite a number of log houses in Fort Meade erected by Uncle Sam for the soldiers and officers with commissaries, and such other conveniences, as were needed.
Fort Meade was the distributing point for temporary forts further in the interior all the way to Fort Capron on the Indian River.
There were no settlers south of Bartow to the Gulf.
Hogs and cattle would get as fat as possible running at large on the wild range, and, during the war between Cuba and Spain, the cattlemen reaped a harvest of "doubloons" through shipments of beef cattle from Punta Rassa and other points to Havana. Comments on such shipping would prove too lengthy for me to tackle here. However, the shippers would carry anywhere from 75 to 800 head in one load, averaging from $16 to $20 per head.
The pioneer never lacked for meat he needed, as he could kill all the
deer and turkeys he desired, if pork and beef were not handy, and raise all the sweet potatoes, rice, and corn he needed, along with sugar cane and vegetables--easier and better living than at the present.The larger stock owners usually used shipped corn, and all mercantile supplies had to be hauled from Tampa at one cent per pound, as that was our nearest market.
It was a long and inconvenient pull from 1853 to along in the eighties when the first railroad reached Lakeland and Bartow, but we lived through it all, and times were generally better than at present.
Capt. F. A. Hendry and the late Louis Lanier occupied homes in Fort Meade that had been built by Uncle Sam. The former butchered beef for the soldiers in Fort Meade and drove one herd to Fort Myers without any road and swam it across the Caloosahatchee River, where it was one and one-half miles across.
Fort Myers was a military post at that time and needed the beef. Both Fort Meade and Fort Myers were abandoned as military posts at the close of the Seminole War from 1856 to 1858.The shipping of so many cattle to Cuba was after the Civil War.
October 12, 2001& links = October 16, 2001