JC cowboy remembers days on the range

A new museum exhibit opening soon in Tallahassee may be of special interest to many of the long-time Jackson Countians whose labor on cattle ranches helped build this community, and to the many who still raise cattle for a living.

The exhibit, “Florida Cattle Ranching: Five Centuries of Tradition,” opens Wednesday, March 11, at the R.A. Gray Building.

Admission is free, and the exhibit is open during regular business hours every weekday through Aug. 9, and for shorter daytime hours on Saturdays and Sundays. A few night hours are also on the schedule.

According to a press release about the show, it traces cattle ranching from its earliest days in Florida to the present.

It appears that most of the material for the exhibit was gleaned from interviews and artifacts in Central and South Florida, but North Florida is also rich in cattle history.

One local man, Dillon Kilpatrick, has a foot in both worlds and plans to check out the show.

Kilpatrick, now 81, still has about 50 head on his place near Sneads, but as a youngster he helped some of the cowmen headquartered in Okechobee County.

His childhood home was near the mouth of a river they had to cross as they drove their steers to market. It was their last overnight stop before taking the animals across a wooden bridge to the Lykes Company on the other side of the river.

Kilpatrick was 12 when they made their last big cattle drive — livestock auctions shortly took over – and he got to help cross the last steers over. All these years later, he still remembers how many were in the herd: 1,583.

He was too young to make any of the weeks-long drives which brought cattle to that crossing, but knows all about about life on the trail. His older brothers and his brothers-in-law were long-time “cracker cowboys” – so called because of the sound their herding whips made.

Kilpatrick said a cook traveled with the cowboys, who usually ate as they sat resting from the long day’s journey.

“They didn’t have any tables and chairs, they’d just eat on the range, sitting on the ground,” Kilpatrick said. “The cook had his cooking materials on a truck, and a wood stove that sat on it.”

“They had potatoes, rice, gravy, canned goods, and bacon most of the time. This cook could sun-cure beef, and they would butcher the fattest little yearling they had so he could cure it into dried beef. That was the main meat dish.”

The cowboys covered hundreds of thousands of acres herding free-range steers for various owners. At each spread, they had camp sheds where they slept on folding cots. The sheds also had one more creature comfort.

“They had mosquito netting,” Kilpatrick said, “Otherwise the mosquitoes would just about eat them up.”

The cowboys had many important tasks to do on the drive. In addition to moving the animals, they had to brand and feed them. Building and repairing fences for the herd owners was also a constant job. They also kept a close watch for signs of disease in the herd.

Kilpatrick said that, sometime in the 1940s, an outbreak of fever tick infection made it necessary for the cowboys to dip each animal in a special bath every two weeks to protect them from the pest.
He stayed in the cattle business after the traditional cattle drive gave way to the march of time and progress.

“It’s just what I was brought up to do,” Kilpatrick said. “I’ve been working with them all my life and until just a few years ago, I rode horses ... I’ve quit riding in the past few years, though. Now I can pen up my cows riding a four-wheeler.”

For a time, his family owned a spread off Butler Road in Jackson County. In the 1940s and 1950s, he put on rodeos there. He said he and one other of the cowboys who participated in the amateur events are the only ones who have not since died or moved on.

Rodeos are also part of the exhibit at the R.A. Gray Building, and Kilpatrick said he’d like to see some of the artifacts it might contain from those events as well.

He’s kept, and in some cases still uses, many of his own treasured ranch-and-rodeo items.

For instance, he still has his old set of riding chaps, the branding iron that once belonged to his grandfather which he uses to mark his own animals, and a few pictures taken in the 1950s of his cattle operation.

According to a press release from the office of Florida Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning, the exhibit is part of the Florida Folklife Program and will include “cracker cowboys, cow dogs, auctions, oral traditions, rodeos, and material culture.  The exhibit includes artifacts, archival photos, artwork by cowboy artists, cowboy poetry, audio and video components, and images by guest photographers Jon Kral, Bob Montanaro, Jimmy Peters, and Carlton Ward, Jr.”

Quick Facts
• The Museum of Florida History is located in the R. A. Gray Building at 500 South Bronough St., Tallahassee.
• Exhibit hours (all Eastern Daylight Time) are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Sunday and holidays, noon to 4:30 p.m.  The museum is also open during First Friday hours, 6 to 9 p.m. and Third Thursdays from 5 to 8 p.m.
• Admission is free. 
• To learn more about the Museum, contact (850) 245-6400 or go online to http://www.museumoffloridahistory.com.