A government study in 1847 described Okeechobee as a "wilderness of profound and wild solitude". Just sixty-five years later, fifty real estate companies in Chicago were selling property around the lake. The region boomed with fishermen, cowboys, and bootleggers, and Okeechobee City earned a reputation as the roughest town east of the Mississippi. 

In the '20s, nature struck: three successive years of heavy rains; a drought that dried out the organic soil so thoroughly that it caught fire; and hurricanes in 1926 and 1928 that decimated the countryside. With the Hoover Dike in place in the '30s and the pioneer spirit still strong, new communities developed from the reclaimed wetlands. Today the area is enmeshed in one of the most intense debates in the country between environmentalists and farmers.