HISTORY AND SOCIAL-ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF
SUWANNEE AND COLUMBIA COUNTIES: AN OVERVIEW
Suwannee and Columbia counties were selected as the focus for initial work by the North Florida FSR/E Program. Agriculture has always been the major economic activity in this region and, despite industrialization and declines in farm numbers, it remains crucial to these counties' economies.
Historically, Suwannee and Columbia counties were located peripherally to Florida's *plantation belt," which extended north and west across the Panhandle and reached down into Alachua and Marion counties. (See F4gure i.) Settlement by Anglo-Americans began in the 1839s and quickly increased after the Civil War ended. The pine and hardwood timber were initially exploited, clearing lands which were put into farming. Railroad and riverboat access to these counties attracted farm families, and by the late 19th century Live Oak and Lake City, the county seats, were expanding towns serving an established and largely independent hinterland agrarian populace. Farm tenancy rates were lower in these counties than in many other Florida counties, creeping upward only when the Depression hit in the late 1920s.
Like much of the South, the early farm households in this region combined subsistence with commercial production. Subsistence crops included corn, potatoes, greens and other vegetables, and a few livestock. Cash crops included cotton, and by the early 29th century, watermelons, winter produce and vegetables for the town markets, and pecans. When cotton was decimated by the boll weevil in the early 1900s, a combined effort by Suwanne' leading farmers and town capitalists (merchants and timber magnates) brought in flue-cured tobacco. Tobacco farmers from the Carolinas were transported to Suwannee, and a major warehouse was built. Live Oak rapidly became Florida's leading flue-cured tobacco market and the farms of Suwannee and Columbia counties the leading flue-cured producers.
Mechanization, introduction of hybrids and chemical fertilizers affected this region as they did nationally. Tobacco production was slow to mechanize, but other enterprises--especially corn--profited by *modern" agriculture. As tobacco markets weakened in the 1950s, the town business community once again acted to strengthen the agricultural base by encouraging the development of livestock production. Farmers were provided incentives to improve the quality of their cattle and hogs, new breeds were introduced, and corn, the major animal teed source, became a major cash crop.
During the 1960s, the region experienced a number of trends towards enterprise specialization. Poultry operations were established, wealthier white farm households moved into cattle production, and the trend toward consolidating tobacco allotments intensified. Some large farms developed irrigated,