Four Centuries of Florida Ranching by George H. Dacy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book was published in 1940 before two significant happenings took place. One was World War II which led to the other, the Florida Legislature in the 1950s aiding realtors and builders by raising property taxes of land not available for residential construction for all of the former WWII military wanting to move to Florida. Both undermined the cattle industry that, author, Dacy could not have foreseen.

So Dacy lays out the history and conditions of the Florida cattle industry through 400 years and writes of only success in the future. Most of his focus is the 50 years prior to 1940. That 50 years saw a cattle industry in Florida take off like a rocket with few sputs and sputters.

With that in mind Dacy’s overall chronicle is the best written with an enormous amount of details that i’ve read. I love Joe Akerman’s books of Florida’s cattle industry, but his are much more exhaustive into vast information. Dacy’s is more concise and focused full of wonderful details and insights.

The book is broken into chapters. The problem is that the chapters are not all logical with Considerable space is used about the tick problem left without conclusion as the legal battles continued after publication of the book.

Dacy is also a very good writer. This book has a lot of life in many parts.

Bottom line:I recommend this book. 9 out of ten points.



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Travelled to Dade City, Florida, for the bi-monthly Pasco County Historical Society meeting, of which I’m a member. Being a bit buried in work at the moment knew I had to get some work done while there. So, during, guest speaker, Susan NcManus’ talk I did scribble some work out!

Then on to the old Osceola County courthouse. Leslie, of the guardian ad litem program partly housed in the building, was very kind to give me a tour through this fascinating building. There are more photos of the courthouse over at my Swampy’s Florida page.

After leaving Kissimmee, i did some poking around for books, that I usually like to do on my birthday. I found some wonder books! And quite a few for friends!

Florida’s Power Structure by Lee Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘Florida’s Power Structure’ is solidly planted from the perspective of the publication year, 1976, and those who published the book, pro-business, Florida Trend magazine. Thus tons are ignored. Specifically those pork barrel politicians who still had a strong hold on the direction of Florida. There is a half page mention, but otherwise ignored. Also ignored are the scandals and corruption of the banking community still emanating from the ’26-’28 crash in 1976. Though footnoted, little is examined of the corruption of scores of developers that was dynamically shifting the “Power Structure” in 1976.

Despite the author steering around reality, the overview of the selected “Power Structure”is very good with background of individuals and what they have accomplished. The entire state is well represented. Something collections, almost entirely magazine articles, like this tend not to do. The view point is almost entirely if you are trying to generate money, whether that happened or not, thus you are part of the “Power Structure”.

An important note is this book is the only books I know of that makes this kind of examination of the “Power Structure”, however limited, of the entire state of Florida with this kind of, though limited, depth. There are lots of lists, regional studies, biographies of power brokers, but none, that i can think of now, that is as comprehensive.

The writing is very simple and straight forward. With a very easy to understand layout of the book. To an extent, this book has a feel of a book of history for the primary school population.

Understanding this is a limited view….

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 5 out of 5 points.

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I’m getting to draw a friend and someone I admire – Mr. Bill Partington. Bill helped start or was director of the Florida Native Plant Society, Florida Audubon Society, Florida Defenders of the Environment, Florida Conservation Foundation, etc, etc, etc. Bill was instrumental in getting president Nixon to stop a horrible project that would have destroyed natural Florida and waste nearly a billion taxpayer dollars, the Cross-Florida Barge Canal. He was also instrumental in creating a wildlife corridor system in Florida, stopping gator poaching, adding land to the Everglades, etc, etc.

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From Chattahoochee, I quickly made my way to Torreya State Park, near Bristol, to get travel and hiking information and to add a second live video using the new Facebook option. Here, I take the north trail from the Gregory House where the six cannon encampment had been for the confederacy during the Civil War.

You can plan a trip to Torreya State Park here: https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Torreya

The Most of Everything: The Story of Miami Beach by Harold Mehling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was soaring to ten stars until the last couple of chapters diverted into an emotional wandering into the author’s view of prejudice of the Jewish community.

This book rockets off with humor and a great storytelling style as it unfolds the history of northeastern Dade County. Lots of flourishing prose of development pros and cons, results and dreams of the future. Mobsters, millionaires, drunks and writers are all covered in an entertaining and informed way that can only leave a reader satisfied. I with more books took this tact in history writing.

Then things go awry as author Mehling takes two chapters to detail his feelings about Jewish prejudice with no reference of any other prejudices in the area, such as to blacks, the poor or anyone else. Some of what he writes are neat anecdotes. But otherwise, he presents a slim case as to what was going on at the time and detailed specifics as he does throughout the rest of the book. He seems to be emotionally driven enough and certainly capable of writing a separate book that might have covered the subject of Jews in South Florida. As someone who has worked involving history of Jews in Florida, a volume like that would have been welcome.

Despite his uneven chapters of prejudice, the rest of the book is dynamte. So…

I recommend this book. 7 out of 10 points.

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