Oral History interview with Kent Chetlain For WQSA RADIO Interview Interviewed by Pat Lawson Transcript of tape recorded interview as part of the Manatee Historical Society Oral History Project Year: 1987; Interview: 1 April 1, 1987 Bradenton, Florida FOR USE IN LIBRARY IV 181 C Page 1 ONLY MANATEE COUNTY PUBLIC MANATEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY LIBRARY SYSTEM Kent Chetlain - WQSA Radio April 1, 1987 Pat Lawson: Good morning. Six minutes after 9 o'clock. Welcome to Newsline. I'm Pat Lawson along with Pete Schofhausen. Today is Wednesday, April 1st, April Fool's Day. Lon Cheney was born on this date in 1883. Wallace Berry and Eddie Beechen have anniversaries of their birth today. Debbie Reynolds is 55. Ali McGraw is 49 today. Before we get started this morning, I have a letter here from a listener, a letter poured into our desk this morning. It says: "Dear Pat and Pete. Enjoy your program very much. I think it's the best thing on radio and I'm certainly happy to listen to you every morning." Then down here at the bottom it says: "I wish I were writing this myself, but they won't let me have anything sharp." Okay. That's our April fool for today. In our studio with us this morning we have a guest we've been trying to book for a long time. He's a busy man. He used to be, and still is, a newspaper writer. He's a baseball player, an umpire, a student of local history, a former sportscaster, and presently, best known to most folks in this area as Manatee County Commissioner Kent Chetlain. Good morning, Mr. Chetlain. Answer: Good morning, Pat. Question: It's good to have you with us. Answer: Well, it's good to be here. Question: We had promised our listeners yesterday when we told them that you would be here that we weren't going to do too much about politics this morning. We really wanted to talk about your vast knowledge of local history. But before we do get started, because of this rain, what's our situation out at Lake Manatee? Because Sarasota and Manatee both get water from that particular reservoir. Answer: Well, our reservoir, of course, obviously is brimming over. In fact, we're releasing a total of a million and a half gallons a minute over the flood gates at our dam at Lake Manatee. And to give you a little idea how much water that is, Sarasota County has been drawing on an average of around 10 to 12 million gallons a day and that equates to about ten minutes of what is going over the dam, so you can see it's a tremendous amount of water there. Question: Well, at least there's one thing about it. With any luck at all, we'll have the water table built up and perhaps no shortage this summer. Answer: I don't think there's any question of that. In fact, recalling back, I remember when I was a reporter with the Bradenton Herald in 1959, we had a hundred inches of rain in the city of Bradenton by one rain gauge. And I think the official count out at the Oneco tower was about 72 inches for MM 181 C Page 2 the year, which is a tremendous amount and probably close to a record at least for the figures that we’ve been keeping. That particular year, we set the record for the most rain in March. And I think, I haven't seen the totals yet, but I'm sure we've approached that this March. Whether that indicates a cycle of rain this summer, I don't know. But it could be. Question: You came to us from out of the state, you've certainly lived in Florida for a lot longer than I have. Pete grew up here. The place we're sitting now in Sarasota County, as I understand it, used to be Manatee County. This all used to be one huge county, didn't it? Answer: Oh, yes. Manatee County was created by the act of the legislature or an act of the legislature in 1855. And it was actually larger than the state of Connecticut. The boundaries were its present northern boundary and south to the Caloosahatchee River by Fort Myers there and then on east to Lake Okeechobee. In fact, the original legal description of the county encompassed an area that hadn't been surveyed. So they said on or near Lake Okeechobee to the east. And roughly up the west bank of the Kissimmee River. And this was slightly more than the whole area of Connecticut. Question: I understand back then that the county seat wasn't even in Bradenton. Answer: The original county seat was in Manatee, which is now part of east Bradenton. It's interesting to note that in the Act of Creation the act called for the county seat to be called Palos, and I looked up in history, and the only Palos that I could come across was the embarkation point of Christopher Columbus when he sailed to the New World on his discovery in 1492. So I think the fact that we had so much Spanish influence down this west coast due to the Spanish fishermen coming up from Cuba and, of course, the earlier conquistador exploration, Ponce de Leon and DeSoto and so forth, had an influence on the legislature at that time. Question: How did people back then in the middle 1800s, what did they do for their livelihood? How did they make a living in Manatee County? Answer: Well, there weren't very many people, of course, in Manatee County then. I think at the time of creation it was estimated there were probably maybe 500 white people, if there were that many. Probably more Indians. And the area was pretty uninhabitable because during the summer months the inland part of the area down here was pretty much inundated by water, standing water, much like we have right now. And the old maps reflect this. They show lakes, vast lakes in the interior part of the county. So we had a lot of mosquitoes, and so it was pretty difficult living surviving in those days. But to get back to your original question, what they did. Primarily, along the coast here they fished. And the Indian mounds, if you go through them, you see a tremendous amount of shells and they made their utensils MM 181 C Page 3 out of shells. So this was a very bountiful area for fishing. And to a slight degree, there was some agriculture. I know that in the original community of Manatee they discovered near a big well there the evidence of an Indian civilization and they discovered also that the Indian grew maize and some other crops. But primarily, I think that the early inhabitants relied to a large degree on fishing and to some degree on hunting. Question: I've heard that some of the crops that were grown back then in the middle 19th century aren't even grown in our area any longer. I'm thinking sugarcane was grown and lemons. And neither one of those are commercially grown in our area anymore, are they? Answer: You're right. Of course, you know, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has certain quotas in things. For example, we can't grow peanuts in this area even though we have sandy soil, we could conceivably grow them. But we couldn't grow them and sell them commercially and be eligible for the federal grants and things, subsidies I should say. But you're absolutely right. In fact, the first white civilization or American civilization in this area was just after the Second Seminole Indian War in 1842 when the federal government passed the Armed Occupation Act which allowed the people to come down and homestead 160 acres in exchange for pledging to bear arms. That's how the act got the name the Armed Occupation Act, in case of emergency. And the Manatee River was one of the earliest settlements right after the Indian War, and the big crop there was, of course, sugarcane. There were about three or four plantations, Dr. Braden's plantation on the south side of the river for whom Bradenton got its name, and on the north side was Major Robert Gamble who built Gamble Mansion, and his tract I think encompassed about 1,500 acres. And this was the largest sugar producing area prior to the Civil War in Florida, one of the largest in the country. Question: You spoke of commercial fishing back in the early days of white settlement in Manatee County. We heard conflicting reports today, and many people that you talk to say that fishing is not what it used to be. Is that true? Have we gone through and harvested too many of our fish? Answer: Well, I can only judge from what I've heard other old-timers talk and the like, plus my own observations living in this area for 30 years. And I have to say that the elimination of many of the nursing areas in grass flats to development have been detrimental to the fish population. Now, one old commercial fisherman told me that the thing that really hurt fishing in this area was the first outbreak, at least in memory, of red tide in 1947. He said prior to that he said you couldn't walk in Terra Ceia Bay, for example, without being stung by a stingray.