LIVING HISTORY
To get an idea of how big the old Cow Creek Ranch was, it
extended all the way from Okeechobee Road, or State Road
70, on the south to Orange Avenue Extension to the north. It
was about the size of a township, about 6 miles either way,
and you had to drive 4 miles from the ranch entrance on
Okeechobee Road just to reach the home place.
Today, the ranch has been carved up into seven separate
ranches, with two of them carrying the Cow Creek name. I
needed help sorting through the real estate.
I had told my friend Phil Strazzulla, one of the top land
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Realtors on the Treasure Coast, about the story I was working
on. Phil and I had gone through 12 years of school together
and shared a love of sailing. His family had also been in the
citrus business and owned Strazzulla Brothers Groves in St.
Lucie County, so he was comfortable and knowledgeable
about the backwoods.
He did some quick research of real estate records and noticed
that the 2,500-acre Cow Creek grove sections on State Road
68 had been purchased by a company controlled by the late
Bernard Egan. Phil contacted our old schoolmate, Greg Nelson,
stepson of Bernard Egan and now president of Bernard Egan &
Co., and received permission to drive around the grove.
I met Phil one early morning at Carter’s Grocery on Orange
Avenue Extension, loaded up in his truck and headed west to
the grove, where we entered through a gate that says “Cow
Creek Ranch.”
Up the sandy road, we meet with Brant Schirard, who
oversees the property for Bernard Egan & Co.
Citrus runs in Brant’s blood. His dad, Brantley Schirard,
is in the Citrus Hall of Fame, and Brant’s son is also in the
citrus business.
We tell Brant the story I’m doing and how I’m trying to
reconnect to the Cow Creek I knew as a child. The gate into
the grove says “Cow Creek Ranch” and I ask him if the grove
extends to Cow Creek crossing. It doesn’t.
Then I ask him about an old Volkswagen camper van. After
the Sloans had sold the home ranch in 1976, Tommy and Jo
Ann allowed my family to have a camp in a hammock on the
grove side they retained. My dad and brother Chuck built a
small cabin — barely more than a lean-to — and my brother
Michael built a chickee. The hammock was also a final resting
Realtor Phil Strazzulla drives on the western edge of the Egan grove, where
excavation of a shallow marl pit created a reservoir in the 1970s.
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The entrance to Egan Family Groves on State Road 68 still carries the name Cow Creek Ranch.