Forestry Division

About forestry service, 33936, Lehigh Acres, FL, US, Florida

Okeechobee (US: OH-kee-CHOH-bee) is a city in and the county seat of Okeechobee County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 US census, the city's population was 5,254. The Lake Okeechobee area was severely damaged in the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, the first recorded Category 5 hurricane in the North Atlantic. This was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to strike the US. Okeechobee is served by the Okeechobee County Airport. == History == Okeechobee is close to the site of the Battle of Lake Okeechobee, a major battle of the Second Seminole War, fought between forces under the command of Zachary Taylor and Seminole warriors resisting forced removal to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s. (This territory was later admitted as the state of Oklahoma in 1907.) From 1918 to 1929, the international drink company Coca-Cola had a plant to bottle their drinks in Okeechobee in the current location of Jersey Mike’s Subs .Damages sustained from the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane was the primary reason they stopped bottling in Okeechobee. In the 1930s, Okeechobee was the commercial center for the surrounding area, shipping hundreds of train cars of winter vegetables annually. It had poultry farms, a catfish shipping plant, and a bullfrog breeding industry. The Florida guide described bullfrog breeding in the Okeechobee region:Frog legs, or 'saddles,' bring high prices in the winter when frogs usually hibernate and are difficult to capture. Frog farmers enclose bottom lands, ponds, or swamps; as frogs live on insects, breeders strew the runs with rotting meat to attract blowflies.