J. O. Huxford

Turpentine - located seven miles south of Perry on the Beach Road.

In 1929 Mr. J. O. Huxford, Sr. began acquiring land in and around Taylor County, Florida, which bore trees suitable for the production of turpentine and other naval stores. He conducted a naval stores business on the land himself through the early 1940's. In about 1943 he leased the business to two of his sons, who from that time forward ran the business with other pulpwood, turpentine, and timber-dealership operations of their own.

In order to give their younger trees room to grow, Mr. Huxford and his sons periodically cleared out dead, worked over, and inferior trees. Some of these were sold, but they often brought very little, since their value as saw timber was limited and at least until 1950 there was no substantial local market for pulpwood.

Mr. Huxford died in 1948. The timberland he had accumulated passed to his estate. By this time the naval stores business was in decline. The turpentine trees, known in the trade as 'cat faces' because the scars left on them from the extraction of turpentine resembled a cat's whiskers, were producing less and less, and synthetic substitutes were encroaching on the market for turpentine. At approximately the same time a pulpwood plant opened up nearby, and a market developed for the cat faces, which the estate began to sell in some quantity. In 1952 or 1953, the sons concluded that turpentining was doing more damage to the trees than it was worth, and all naval stores activity ceased.

In 1955 the land was conveyed by the estate to the J. O. Huxford Estate, Inc., a corporation newly formed for that purpose. The principal beneficiaries of the estate, Mr. Huxford's four children, became the sole shareholders of the corporation. By this time it was clear that the future of the land lay in tree farming, the production of 'good round trees' for sale. The shareholders considered selling the entire tract to someone else who would develop it for that purpose, but could not find a buyer at a suitable price. Accordingly, they stepped up the program of site improvement. Gradually the cat faces and other inferior trees were cleared out altogether, and new trees grew in. Consistent with past practice, some young trees were planted. New roads were built on the land and new fire breaks made. For a number of years the corporation both listed and advertised itself in a directory for Taylor County as a tree farm ('WE BUY--WE SELL TREES-- LOGS-- PULPWOOD'). Otherwise, the corporation did virtually no advertising or sales promotion.