Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch

Taking the grand tour with Alto “Bud” Adams, Jr., on his 60,000-acre ranch near Fort Pierce is a lesson in ecology, geography and history all rolled into one. In 1937, when Bud was 11, his father, Alto Adams, Sr., bought the beginnings of what would later evolve into one of Florida’s largest, privately owned cattle ranches.

Bud didn’t spend much of his childhood on the ranch, however. He attended high school in Tallahassee, where his father had become a justice of the Florida Supreme Court.  When the family moved to the state capital, they sold their cattle and Bud first learned the ranching business when he was sent to work cows with the Irlo Bronson family during his summer vacation.

Read the entire article in the January 2000 issue