03/25/2020
From the President's Desk - Billy Kempfer
The Landowners
Florida is, of course, a natural escape for the Northeast portion of the United States and beyond. It is the playground of choice for millions of people around the world. It is a boon for a seemingly endless string of construction projects as newcomers arrive daily to take up a new life.
While ranching continues to be a way of life for many in Central Florida, time, economic pressures and regional growth have eroded what once was vast land holdings.
This series of articles discusses the history of three of these landowners, the generations that were built from the land, and the challenges they face both now and in the future.
Part 1
Billy Kempfer
Kempfer Cattle Company
George W Hopkins, my great grandfather was born in VA, before it was split in 1847. When the family migrated West, George and his brother settled in Michigan and were instrumental in settling the town of Bear Lake, Michigan. They owned a brick mill and sawmill along with other businesses. A picture of his sawmill shows milling over 40,000 board feet of logs per day. As the timber ran out in the area he went looking elsewhere. Family lore has it, that he was friends with one or all of the group of Firestones, Ford, Edison, and Flagler and they directed him to this area.
In 1902 George purchased 196,000 acres from Braxton Beauchamp in this area and started several endeavors including cattle, farming, and timber. George formed the Union Cypress Co around 1910 and built a large sawmill south of Melbourne close to the Indian River and Florida East Coast Railroad. He constructed a narrow-gauge railroad to bring timber from Deer Park to the sawmill. Around the mill site, the town of Hopkins was formed, which included churches, schools, and commissaries with a post office and a doctor's office.
The mill was large enough to supply the town of Melbourne with electricity until it burned in 1924. Another endeavor of George Hopkins was digging a canal from Lake Washington to the Indian River to drain the St. Johns River in 1904-1905, to make the river marsh farmable and grazeable. The project was stopped for fear of the tide pushing saltwater too far inland. My grandfather William H. Kempfer, a professional forester, was hired to run the timber operation and moved to Deer Park from Michigan in 1914.
The 104,000 acre ranch, Hopkins & Kempfer Land & Cattle, was formed in 1915. The Northeast quadrant was a treeless prairie known as Ocean Prairie and the rest Pine flatwoods with Jane Green, Bull Creek, Crabgrass, and PennwaCreeks running through it. The St. Johns flowed through the eastern portion of the ranch.
During the late teens, much of the prairie was sold in ΒΌ sections to whole sections to farmers. They mostly grew potatoes and had a good crop the first year but the second year they had a blight and couldn't pay for the land so the land went back to Hopkins.
After Hopkins death in 1925, the land was divided among the four siblings. Two daughters and one son still lived in Michigan. The two northern parcels were sold to N. Ray Carroll, which he later sold to the Mormon Church around 1950 and is part of Deseret Ranch, the largest cattle operation in the U.S. My father,George Kempfer,inherited land in Michigan,he then traded his uncle Arlie Hopkins for his parcel giving my family approximately 55,000 acres in Deer Park.
Sometime in the mid-50's the state of Florida bought a one mile strip along the east boundary which included the river. In 1967 the Central & South FL Flood Control District bought under the threat of condemnation 17,000 acres the whole western portion of the ranch plus several more thousand in the marsh on the east boundary. The purpose of this project was to build a series of levees from 520 South to Blue Cypress Lake, creating a series of upland reservoirs with the one above the Jane Green being the largest at 10,000 acres. As the levee was under construction the Florida Wildlife Commission sent two biologists to kill the project and turn the land into a Wildlife Management Area.
The ranch has operated under several names over the past 100+ years, Ocean Prairie Ranch, Kempfer Stock Farm, Kempfer's Deer Park Ranch and now the land is owned by the next generation as Deer Park Ranch Ltd. Our main business of raising beef cattle is Kempfer Cattle Company. As the family has grown we have diversified with a sawmill, sod company, hunt clubs, and a shell pit. Kempfer Sawmill buys most timber off-site, but we still manage our Pine and Cypress timber on the ranch. Kempfer Sod Company grows and harvests Floratam, St. Augustine, and Bahia sod. We have a rather intensive wildlife management program with two hunting leases, one dating back to 1931 and the other 1942 making them the two oldest clubs in the state, I think. Buck Hammock Materials, produces road base from fossilized shells.
As I mentioned earlier, Ocean Prairie was a treeless native prairie. Today, we have planted most of the open land with improved grasses. There are multiple Oak and Palm Hammocks along with many Cypress ponds all over the prairie. One of the huge changes George Hopkins made was to dig ditches from the tree line at the west edge of the prairie to the edge of the marsh every half mile from the north side of Jane Green several miles north. This helps drainage on the prairie for crops. Other changes to not only this area but most of the state and nation as well, was the removal of the larger predatory animals that were a great danger to both people and livestock. There are many creeks named for wolves all over the area and we have a spot on the ranch called Wolf Den, which supposedly is where the last wolf in the area was killed. We still see an occasional bear and bobcat and a lot of coyotes and the swamps have an abundance of gators.
Our father died when I was 16 and my brother Reed was 14. At 18 I started managing the cattle on the ranch and Reed managed the equipment. When my twin sons graduated college I encouraged them to make some of the management decisions along with handling some regulatory permitting with the water management district. They were very aggressive in their ideas for making improvements to the land and cattle. I would tell folks "they are trying to set the whole world on fire and I'm trying to keep it at controlled burn and I was still in the "hell no we aren't" stage of management. In my opinion, they were so aggressive and progressive, but their concepts were extremely beneficial for the ranch. The next generation has moved far beyond where Reed & I were, especially with our breeding program. I now have five grandsons that have the same desire we did, so if regulation or population doesn't run us out of business, we are good for at least two more generations.
The new buzzword for agriculture is sustainability. If this (Deer Park Ranch) isn't a sustainable operation, I don't know what is!
In the U.S. today just 2% of the population feeds the rest of the nation. As of 2019 Agriculture was ranked 3rd in the industries driving Florida's economy. But politicians are elected by folks that for the most part think all food comes from the grocery store. We have very few politicians that are agriculture friendly in the legislature today. At least most of the environmental community sees the value of the open spaces.
Water quality and quantity are the hottest issues affecting agriculture today. We need quantity to produce food & fiber. All of the quality problems have until recently been blamed on agriculture. I tell folks when there were 2 million cattle and 1 million people everything was great. Today there are less than 1 million cattle and 22 million people plus tourist and now it's the cow's fault.
As the world population increases, we may need any farmable land to be converted from pasture to crops. I'm 73 years old and cannot ride my horse anymore and I think things will last my lifetime, but I worry about the future for my kids and grandkids. But I think as long as it's profitable for folks to stay in agriculture business things will be OK but I dread the day when we plant our terminal crop of concrete.
Before this last election, I worried about my freedom and I feel we are only one election away from losing that still.
