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Then a Florida Cracker named Zeb Vance Hooker came along.
Hooker's failed real estate tries in the Everglades brought him
east in the early 1930s. He picked a square of government-owned
land to squat on, near the southeast end of the lake, and built
a wooden shack. There he and his chickens and goats became the
first residents of Lake Clarke Shores. He was simply known as
"The Hermit."
In 1936, the Patrick family bought a large
tract of land on which they planted mango groves and raised
cattle until prospectors F. C. McKenzie and Roy Dilling bought
their land. McKenzie and Dilling subdivided the property into 2
1/2-acre mango tree plots to sell to investors. No go. The trees
never bore fruit, and an employee embezzled what little money
was made.
By 1946, their only hope was to sell and abandon the
land, still today known on property tax rolls as
"Florida Mango Grovelets." But who would want a
collection of frogs, quail, ducks and doves, so far
from town? Patsy Reynolds would. The land she found at
the end of Antigua Road gave her all the privacy and
space she wanted to raise her dogs and cats. In 1946
she built her home, which was destroyed by fire on May
26, 1995.
A few other people bought from McKenzie and Dilling,
but not to build homes. In 1949, Mr. and Mrs. Robert
Oen and two of their friends bought adjacent lots
where they enjoyed many Sunday afternoons fishing and
cooking out at the "lake place." Later that year, Mr.
and Mrs. Joseph Langford bought property so they would
have a place to have family picnics. "You had to pick
your days to get out here," said Mrs. Langford in town
records. "Because when it was wet, you got stuck in
the mud, and when it was dry, you got stuck in the
sand."
Local attorney Walter Travers had an eye on
transforming the big bunch of weeds to a waterfront
community, despite warnings that the land was simply
too low for development to be economically feasible.
Travers was undeterred: He bought property from
shoreline owners and asked state officials to buy the
land that had been exposed in the drainage project 30
years before. |
