Ready to ride into history?

There’s still time to sign up for the Great Florida Cattle Drive, set for Dec. 4-10.

To celebrate the previous drives and to salute the 500 years of Florida’s “cow culture,” the Florida Cow Culture Preservation Committee will once again be driving cattle, riding the trail, sleeping on the ground and living the life of our ancestors; even if only for a few days.

The drive will end in Kenansville, Florida with a Grand Trail’s End Celebration on Dec. 10, which will include musicians, singers, poets, storytellers, historians and re-enactors. Dancers, singers and historians from the Seminole Tribe of Florida will be there to make the event more colorful and to remind folks that the Seminoles were an important factor in this state’s development as a cattle power; and remain so to this day.

The re-enactment drives began in 1995 to honor Florida’s rich ranching heritage, a reminder of times when wild cattle were collected, driven to ports and exported to Cuba. The cattle were originally brought over by Spanish explorers and settlers to the newly discovered “La Florida” in 1521, and went wild, adapting to living in swamps and various ecosystems of Florida.  The event is used to educate Florida citizens and folks around the globe, to the fact that the cattle business in the United States began in Florida. The first American cowboys were Floridians.

The first Great Florida Cattle Drive re-enactment took place in 1995, and celebrated Florida’s 150th birthday. The event was recognized as the largest sesquicentennial event in Florida, making the news worldwide.  Drives were also held in 2006, 2016, and will be again this year, 2022.  Originally it was scheduled for December 2021, to be 500 years since the arrival of cattle in Florida, but Coronavirus forced a delay of plans, so the drive was rescheduled for Dec. 4-10, 2022.

Registration deadline is Nov. 5. To register, go online to Registration Great Florida Cattle Drive (regfox.com)