Letter from Arcadia

I know it's hard to believe this, but the buzz is that our neighbor, DeSoto County, is "the next big thing."

DeSoto County? Little DeSoto County. Impoverished DeSoto County?

One and the same.

Real estate investors and trend spotters are predicting the area is set for explosive growth, with new subdivisions about to pop up in every direction from Arcadia. Huge chunks of land have been bought, and the coastal counties are filling up or becoming too expensive for many folks.

But old-timers find this all too funny. Arcadia? Who would have thought?

It wasn't all that long ago that this place had a CB radio nickname that described it well. Tune to Channel 19 and you'd hear, "Hey, good buddies, this here's the Road Runner truckin' south from Cigar City, dropping off a load in Cow Town."

Cigar City was Tampa, of course. But Cow Town? That's what CB'ers called Arcadia.

With massive development still a few years away, the name remains fitting. At its heart, this is a cow and citrus town.

Still Mayberry I've known Arcadia for a long time. Once dated a girl who worked behind the soda fountain at Arcadia Drug Store. And I've worked here daily since Hurricane Charley blasted through DeSoto County on Aug. 13, 2004, and touched just about every life. I like it just the way it is. Many of the 33,000 residents do, too.

There's no bumper-to-bumper traffic. No rush hour. Crime is low, and serious crime is so rare it's always front-page news. The crime of the century here was some honors students at the high school vandalizing school buses as a senior prank.

In many ways this is still Mayberry. Lunch gossip has a Lake Wobegon quality.

"Someone tried to get my water pump again."

"Nooo."

"Pried my gate. Third time this year."

"You call Vernon?"

"Nah. I didn't file a complaint, just mentioned it to him at Rotary."

And so it goes.

All looks tranquil on the surface. Kids dive from an abandoned bridge into the Peace River, where fossil hunters comb the banks for million-year-old bones. Tractor-pulled sprayers work the orange groves that line most major roads.

We got a Wal-Mart distribution center. Word around town was that Wal-Mart was going to pay $12 an hour for manual laborers. Actually, it was $12.50! That's like striking gold in a county like DeSoto.

It's also a measure of how poor DeSoto County is. A third of its residents are Hispanic, many of them field-workers, some here only seasonally for the orange harvest.

The county had the distinction recently of achieving the second-highest teen-pregnancy rate in Florida. There's nothing to do here, teens say. There's one rundown movie theater with two screens, but there's no bowling alley, no videogame place, no mall.

The public swimming pool closed back when integration became a fact of American life. Some say the pool's closing was a consequence, but today's Arcadia has a City Council with two elected black members. It has a city marshal-called a police chief in other places-who is black.

Otherwise, not much has changed in the past half-century in Arcadia.

The changes that did come were east of the downtown, along S.R. 70, a coast-to-coast, east-west route that takes trucks through Arcadia. Car dealers moved out to S.R. 70, and then fast-food chains and shopping center tenants that come and go. Not long ago, a Sonic and a Chili's opened east of town. When Arcadia wants to party or shop, it drives to Charlotte County.

Arcadia incorporated in 1896 and was named after the daughter of a prominent citizen. It was a timber, cattle and citrus town. A downtown was growing nicely, and wood was so plentiful it was the construction material of choice. Even the sidewalks were wooden, as were the overhangs that protected shoppers from the elements. Rural residents came to Arcadia each weekend. They bought groceries, got haircuts, picked up a new shirt or two, and talked. Arcadia was a meeting place.

Then came Thanksgiving Day, 1905.

It's still not known what happened, but fire was seen coming from the windows of a downtown stable as evening fell. Bucket brigades quickly formed, but a wicked wind fanned the flames as they leaped among the wooden buildings. The day after Thanksgiving, the entire downtown-several square blocks-lay in blackened ruins. Soon after, city leaders decreed that rebuilding would be with block and stone only.

If you walk today down Oak Street, the main street in downtown Arcadia, you'll see atop most buildings a placement block reading "1906." The entire town was rebuilt that year and has changed little since.

Stalled in Time Downtown Arcadia today is famed for its antique stores. It has at least 20-the number changes constantly-and the town and its stores are a step back in time. But while the antiques district attracts outside visitors, downtown Arcadia offers little for the locals, and many suggest that it must diversify its shops if it is to survive.

You'd think Arcadia's most valuable assets would be along the Peace River, which runs through the town. Riverfront property is prime in most towns. Not here. South of S.R. 70 along the river lies an unsightly industrial wasteland of railroad cars and junked buses. Railroad tracks parallel the river.

You just know some future developer will buy it, throw the trash out and erect high-rise condominiums there. Right now, however, the development interest is along Kings Highway from Port Charlotte and S.R. 31 from Fort Myers. A Cape Coral developer has also put together sizable acreage along U.S. 17 from Punta Gorda.

The biggest buyer, however, is billionaire Brad Kelley, who made his fortune by starting a cigarette company in 1991. One of his brands, USA Gold, became the nation's fifth-best-selling cigarette, and Kelley parlayed his startup investment into a billion-dollar sale of the company in its 10th year.

He began buying enormous chunks of land in southeastern DeSoto County, as well as in Texas and New Mexico. Kelley lives in Kentucky, and his purchases-totaling well over $40 million-have been made through a Venice attorney. On these properties, he told the press, he would let endangered animals roam free; so that seems the fate of eastern DeSoto. Endangered animals are replacing canker-infected citrus trees.

Developer interest has made rich folks of former good old boys and girls. County Commissioner Terry Welles, for instance, is a descendant of a long-time DeSoto family. Not long ago, he sold some pasture along U.S. 17 for a reported $27 million. Welles said the actual figure was nobody's business but his, and then went out and took helicopter-piloting lessons before buying his own helicopter to travel from a residence in the North Georgia mountains to DeSoto. A rodeo fan, he's told friends he'll fly down for every Arcadia rodeo event.

The oldest name in DeSoto County has to be Turner. Long ago, Grandpa Turner bought "worthless scrub" land as far as the eye could see. He ran cattle on it, sold some timber, grew some citrus. Today the Turner name appears most frequently on DeSoto properties, and the Turner family has branched out to include real estate sales among its businesses.

Other big DeSoto businesses include fill dirt and sod farms for those new coastal homes. Huge trucks make driving on almost any highway in DeSoto an adventure.

Charley Checks Progress But all has not been gold lately in DeSoto County. Problems began with the second major disaster to strike the area in a century. The first was fire; the second was wind.

Hurricane Charley blew into the county from the southwest, having first wreaked havoc in Charlotte County. It caught DeSoto largely by surprise.

With many families living in mobile homes or poorly constructed residences, safe shelter was needed. Some 1,400 people moved into the Turner Agri-Civic Center, a large arena complex where stage shows and agricultural events were held. Charley brought winds of 145 mph or more to Charlotte, and they were about 110 mph when they struck DeSoto.

Inside the Turner arena-yes, named for the family that owns most of DeSoto and donated the land for the center-a banging noise became audible, then light could be seen at the top of the east wall. The winds were ripping the roof off.

Officials ordered everyone to the west side of the building, where they huddled in darkened hallways and bathrooms and closets as the east wall collapsed.

Miraculously, no one was injured or killed in the arena. Elsewhere, two county residents had died in the hurricane, and almost every home and business had damage.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency began setting up mobile homes and, at the peak, had about 1,400 DeSoto families in temporary trailers. That's more than one-tenth of the families in DeSoto. Two large FEMA parks were opened and became cesspools of crime.

The Squeeze on Citrus The citrus industry took a terrible blow from Charley. About half the green fruit on trees was ripped off by winds. Some trees were toppled. Irrigation systems burst from the grove soil. Beehives were scattered.

But the worst enemy was unseen-citrus canker had been borne on Charley's winds, swept into Charlotte County and spread widely in DeSoto County. Soon, new canker discoveries were being made in all parts of the county.