A place in Florida: an immigrant town longs for its chickens

There’s one place in Florida that could once flaunt its title of the “Chicken Capital” of the state. But not anymore, because long ago his chickens came home to sleep.

Not that this place in Florida did anything wrong to deserve its fate. It’s just that the good people who founded Masaryktown ran into a combination of bad information, bad luck, bad times, and a world gone by.

This city on US Highway 41, about 40 miles north of downtown Tampa, was founded in 1926 by Czechoslovakian immigrants who were told they could prosper growing citrus in this part of Florida. They named the city after the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas G. Masaryk, a friend of President Woodrow Wilson and husband of “an American girl from Brooklyn.”

The immigrants had taken advice from Joseph Joscak, editor of a Czechoslovakian newspaper in New York City, about moving to “a paradise in Florida” during one of the state’s real estate booms, “where you can grow up to three crops a year.” day’. year’. This greatly attracted immigrants, most of whom were tired of working in the factories of the north.

The immigrants did their homework, but it was of little use. First, they consult agriculture experts at the University of Florida, who have warned of “cold pockets” around Masaryktown. Next, they asked the editor of the florida grower magazine, who pointed out thriving citrus groves in the vicinity of Spring Lake. So they accepted the New York publisher’s promise of a ‘paradise’ in this Florida spot.

From Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, but mostly New York, they arrived by bus and train, only to find that the land they had purchased was “anything but promising.” That didn’t stop them, they were used to hard work, and they set out to establish their new city, naming the north-south streets after American presidents and the east-west streets after Czechoslovakian poets, writers, and national heroes.

And they planted citrus groves, some as large as 20 acres.

It didn’t take long for them to realize their mistake. The first winter, the frosts began to kill the trees, first one frost, then another. Pruning only made it worse. The following winter, a disastrous frost killed the rest of the trees. The immigrants were left with a new town but with no way to make it economically viable.

Some returned north. Others borrowed money from relatives to keep going. Some parents went north to work, leaving their families behind. Those who stayed decided to grow vegetables to survive: cucumbers, sweet potatoes, onions. But they could not find a market for their crops, and most returned north, never to return.

Then, almost miraculously, the answer appeared: Chickens. They could raise chickens and sell them in the growing cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg. The break came when a chicken farmer from Aripeka, a few miles to the southwest, came to Masaryktown and started a chicken farm. And of course, then the eggs came along, and people in Tampa and St. Petersburg ate eggs too.

It didn’t take long for the industrious immigrants to form Hernando County Egg Producers, Inc., becoming arguably the largest egg cooperative in the southeastern US. The thin was yet to come. The small egg farmers who were the life blood of the cooperative could not keep up with the changing times, which saw eggs produced by farms with thousands of hens laying eggs.

Once again Masaryktown faced hard times. And, while many descendants of immigrants moved away, newcomers and descendants who stayed behind were forced to find work in larger nearby cities. Even so, the city today has almost a thousand inhabitants, some of whom still keep a few chickens.

Visit what you would call this “sleepy” city today and you will still find those who say they wish more chickens would come home to roost. Those, they say, were the good old days.