At Consolidated, we believe the Grass Isn’t Greener on the Other Side. The Grass is Greener

In 1922, the young Jay Starkey resigned his Post Office job to pursue his dream of being a cattle rancher. He bought 10 acres south of Largo in Pinellas County for $50 down plus one horse and one cow. In 1927 his friend Dave Cunningham became his partner and, over time, the two men grew the ranch to more than 650 acres. The property became known as Ulmerton Ranch.

As the Great Depression waned, it became evident to Starkey and Cunningham that rising land prices and encroaching development would hinder opportunities to expand in Pinellas, so they looked farther north for opportunities. In 1937, they drove their 300-head herd to the grassy expanses of southwest Pasco County and turned the cattle loose on 16,000 acres of unfenced pasture and forest cut by the Pithlachascotee and Anclote rivers.

Starkey Ranch

Jay Starkey, Dave Cunningham, and Dave’s brothers Howard and Ernest formed a partnership to buy the land, creating the CS Ranch. They got much of the property cheap, in some cases from tax sales on land abandoned by logging companies. The ranch remained open range land until 1940, when Starkey and his partners painstakingly barb-wired the perimeter. They raised purebred Brahma cattle, and had timber and citrus operations. By 1956, Jay Starkey was the sole owner of what by then was known as the Anclote River Ranch, having survived all three Cunningham brothers.

ORIGIN OF THE WILDERNESS PRESERVE

In 1965, he sold the cattle on the ranch to his son, Jay B, Jr.  The elder Starkey retained a 75-acre orange grove and the timber operation. Having seen development in Florida consume so much land, Starkey set out to preserve much of the Ranch as wilderness, so that future generations would be able to see what the land looked like when he was young.  He sold a vast tract of the Ranch to the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) to ensure that it would not be developed. This was the start of the Jay B Starkey Wilderness Preserve, which is a Pasco County park. After his death in 1989, his heirs sold more land to the State to expand the Preserve.