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  • Florida Cattle Ranching: Five Centuries of Tradition
  • Annette B. Fromm
Florida Cattle Ranching: Five Centuries of Tradition. Developed by the Florida Folklife Program in the Florida Department of State in partnership with Florida Cultural Resources Inc. Curated by Tina Bucuvalas and Bob Stone . The exhibit opened at the Museum of Florida History, Tallahassee, FL (March 13-August 9, 2009). It appeared at Tampa Bay History Center, Tampa, FL (September 10-December 19, 2009), Western Folklife Center, Elko, NV (January 18-July 24, 2010), and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, Miami, FL (September 3, 2010-January 23, 2011). Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Humanities Council, Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, Florida Cattlemen's Foundation, Florida Cattlemen's Association, Seminole Tribe of Florida, Florida Cracker Cattle Association, and numerous individual donors.

Cattle ranching in the land of the sun? Where's the beef? Spanish explorers and settlers introduced cattle to New Spain in the sixteenth century, making Florida the nation's first cattle state. In Spanish Florida, cattle were set free or escaped, acclimatizing to the unique and challenging environment. Over the years a distinct breed, known colloquially as Cracker cattle, adapted to the rigors of Florida's extreme climate, diseases, and parasites. Cracker is a term thought to refer to the crack of the unique Florida cattle whip and is applied to early British settlers of the territory and their descendents. Cracker is now a badge of identity and pride, used by long-time residents of Florida to self-identify. Small herds of the distinct Cracker breed, descendants of the Spanish stock, have been preserved by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Today, the state's cattle industry is concentrated in central and south Florida. Ranchers primarily focus their efforts on raising calves, which are then shipped to the Grain Belt in the western states to reach full size. With two years of intensive field research, the Florida Folklife Program staff has traced the historical significance of this long-time industry in the Sunshine State, as well as the richness and diversity of traditional culture associated with cattle ranching in Florida.

Visitors enter Florida Cattle Ranching through a ranch gateway made of cypress and mounted with four bleached Cracker cow skulls. Suspended on chains from the gateway is the exhibit title in cut iron, resembling many ranch entrances across the state. The exhibit is divided into twelve sections, each with a central text panel aimed to introduce visitors to the subject at hand. Artifacts and photographs bring to life each topic. Most artifacts are mounted under Plexiglas on covered wooden pedestals. Pedestal bases repeat the gateway theme and resemble typical ranch fencing; each pedestal is surrounded with images of present-day cattle brands. This thematic device was a fundraiser created by the curators; ranchers from around the state contributed to the exhibit in order to include their brands.

Many of the exhibit photos, both historic and present day, have been reproduced on large-scale cloth banners. Some issues were found by the curators in the quality of reproduction on the cloth medium and the placement of labels on these photos. This detail aside, this technique is very effective as a repeated two-dimensional visual representation throughout every section of the exhibit. Historic photos used in the exhibit—for example illustrations of Cracker Cowboys in Florida from an 1895 issue of Harpers New Monthly Magazine—help to reinforce the continuity of cattle ranching in the state. Cast or wrought iron is used repeatedly throughout the exhibit to suspend large-scale cloth photograph banners.

As visitors walk through the exhibit, they are taken initially through colonial Florida and the [End Page 218] introduction of cattle and horses by the Spanish explorers. Spurs and a horseshoe dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are among the artifacts that bring to life this long-past period in Florida's ranching history. The next section of the exhibit represents the growth of the cattle industry in the nineteenth century. A McClellan saddle, possibly dating from the Civil War, is used to discuss the development of the cattleman's primary tool, and a nineteenth-century barbed-wire...

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