1915 was a big year for Okeechobee. Much of the town’s commercial district was built that year, including the L. M. Raulerson Department Store and the adjoining Darrow building. A Florida East Coast spur extended to the city, allowing cattlemen to move herds quickly to market and opening up the fishing and timber industries. And on July 13, 1915, the city was incorporated.
According to History of Okeechobee County by Kyle S. VanLandingham and Alma Hetherington, the November 1916 Florida Farmer and Homeseeker reported this:
Okeechobee is a new town which has sprung up in the past two years as if by magic, and is now attracting attention as a fruit growing, truck and general farming section of South Florida, as well as having an abundance of cypress and pine timber of first growth, naturally of large size and best quality. It is also the port of entry for the enormous fish industry on Lake Okeechobee. Over its Onoshohatchee River [Taylor Creek] is carried a freight and fishing business which totals over $1,500,000 in a year.
Undated Palm Beach Post file photo of the Raulerson Building at SW 5th Avenue and Park Street in downtown Okeechobee.
Tags: incorporated, Okeechobee County, This Week in History
Our July 23 column give a brief history of Okeechobee County, a sparsely populated but historically important part of our region.
Perhaps its most cherished structure is the one-story white-frame, one-room schoolhouse at Southwest Fifth Street and South Parrott Avenue.
It now houses the Okeechobee County Historical Society’s administrative offices and its collection of historical materials.
On Dec. 3, it held a 100th birthday party for the school.
The settlement originally was called the Bend, because it is on a peninsula at the confluence of the Kissimmee River, Taylor Creek and Lake Okeechobee.
Students originally met in a thatched-roof shack.
The schoolhouse was built in 1909, eight years before the county was formed from parts of Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Osceola counties.
The St. Lucie County school system designated it School 14.
By then, the settlement had been renamed “Tantie,” and the name stuck to the school as well.
Teacher Tantie Huckaby of South Carolina had given her name to the post office in 1902.
The town became Okeechobee in 1911. By the fall of 1915, the school had become so crowded a tent was set up for the overflow.
Construction began March 18, 1916, on a new two-story brick building. The Okeechobee Public School opened later that year.
The former schoolhouse eventually became a private home.
It stayed that way until the mid-1970s, when W.R. “Ronnie” Watts, who had been a toddler when his parents moved in to the building around 1922, agreed to sell it to the historical society.
The home needed a lot of restoration and other work, including repositioning it on its block foundation; the 1928 hurricane had knocked it askew.
Okeechobee Historical Society Museum & Schoolhouse: 1850 Highway 98 N., Okeechobee. (863)763-4344. Guided tours by appointment.
Read more: History of Okeechobee County, by Kyle Van Landingham and Alma Hetherington.
The 1909 Okeechobee schoolhouse, originally designated School 14, was the first to be built in Okeechobee County. After a new school was built in 1916, it became a private home, and it stayed that until the mid 1970s. This picture was taken Sept. 20, 1976, as the schoolhouse was being moved to a new site. It now houses the Okeechobee County Historical Society’s administrative offices and its collection of historical materials. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Tags: buildings, Okeechobee County, schools
Often overlooked in our circulation area is sparsely populated, but historically significant, Okeechobee County.
Betty Chandler Williamson, president of the county’s historical society for more than a decade, writes to remind us that the county was formed in 1917 from parts of Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Osceola counties.
Williamson writes that the area’s first white settlers were Peter and Louisiana Raulerson, who arrived in 1896 from Basinger, just up the road in Osceola County.
Williamson is one of many descendants in the county; Louisiana was her great-aunt, her “Aunt Anna.”
Williamson said that when she is visiting a school or when a busload of students comes to the society’s museum for a tour, she and Zelda Johnson Mixon, a great-granddaughter of the Raulersons, “don old-fashioned clothes and speak to these pupils, which are very attentive, and inform them of our local history. We enlighten them with tales of our colorful past.”
A 1907 wooden schoolhouse dubbed “Tantie” sits on the museum property.
Tantie was the settlement’s original name; in 1911, it was renamed Okeechobee, not “Okeechobee City.”
Williamson said that it was only 15 years ago that she and Mixon realized they were cousins.
“We do not rehearse our talks, as together we have so many interesting facts to share,” she wrote.
More Okeechobee County history, from our files:
The great 1928 hurricane killed about two dozen in Okeechobee.
The city incorporated July 13, 1915. That year, a Florida East Coast Railway spur allowed cattlemen to move herds quickly to market and opened up the fishing and timber industries.
The Battle of Okeechobee, on Christmas Day 1837, was the largest and last great clash of the Second Seminole War. A large band of Seminoles was routed by a brigade of about 800 federal troops led by future president Col. Zachary Taylor.
Okeechobee Historical Society Museum & Schoolhouse: 1850 Highway 98 N., Okeechobee, (863) 763-4344. Guided tours by appointment.
An Okeechobee welcome sign features Chief Osceola and Zachary Taylor, who led troops in battle against the Seminoles. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Tags: Okeechobee County
