We were greeted by a cow hunter, straight out of the 1870s. He told his story in the present tense as if it were 1876. Florida is open range cattle country. The cattle belonging to a given rancher are marked by cutting their ear rather than branding. Each spring, the cow hunters start in South Florida and hunt for the cows that belong to their employer, as well as others that were running wild and had no markings. Every 15 to 20 miles (a day's ride) from South Florida to St. Augustine, there is a cow camp where the cow hunter deposits the cows from the day's hunt and hires a local to watch and care for them. The cow camps are used by many cow hunters, year after year.
Once the cow hunters, also known as crackers for the cracking of their whips as they drive the cattle, reach the northern limit of their hunt, somewhere near St. Augustine, they start back toward their South Florida startling point, gathering all the cattle they have deposited in the cow camps along the way. The locals that were hired to watch and care for the cattle now become cattle drivers.
The assembled herd is driven to a port near Ft. Myers where they are sold and shipped to Cuba, who is at war with Spain and buys every cow they can find.
So that's the story of Florida's Cow Camps and the crackers who used them.
After we left the cow camp, we went to a local store about five miles from the park entrance and picked up some supplies. Ice cream, milk, ice, and beer were on the list.
This being our last day in camp, I decided to get real nosy and find out what the people across the road, from Alaska with the big motorhome, were doing over there. All week long, the woman was sitting at a table under an awning working on something while her husband was under a canopy doing something with a pneumatic brad nailer and a standing jigsaw. Turns out, she was assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Not very interesting to me, but he was making picture frames for the water color nature scenes and animals that he painted.
His name is Larry Dunkerson, but everyone calls him Dunk. If you look at the pictures I posted from 3/17, you'll see a sign marking Dunk's Tower. Well, the tower was falling down and the park manager told Dunk that, as a volunteer, if he would rebuild the tower, it would be named after him. Thus, Dunk's Tower.
Dunk and his wife are from Alaska. They leave their motorhome at their daughter's house in California and fly home to Alaska in May. Then in September, they fly back to their daughter's house, pick up the motorhome, and hit the road. They've lived in Alaska since 1979 and have been volunteers at this park for five years.
It was an interesting day. Tomorrow, we're off to Oscar Scherer State Park in Osprey, FL. See you there!
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