Dr. Howell Tyson Lykes, The Rise of a Cattle King and Family Empire

They called him the “cattle king” and “founder of an empire. ” Although he’s listed on an early physician’s mural in Brooksville, the life of Dr. Howell T. Lykes stretches far beyond his few years as a physician in town.

Howell Tyson Lykes was born on August 25, 1846, in Columbia, South Carolina. At the age of 15, he joined a unit commanded by his brother-in-law, Judge Wall, and fought in the Civil War.
Union forces captured young Howell Lykes, held prisoner, and released at Bayport in 1865. He went on to study medicine at Charleston Medical College in South Carolina and returned to Hernando County.

In the early 1870s, Dr. Lykes practiced medicine in Brooksville but didn’t receive fulfillment from it or desire to continue it. After two years, he turned over his practice to Dr. Sheldon Stringer. (Stringer married into the Lykes family when he wed Howell’s sister, Margaret Elizabeth. )

In 1874, Dr. Howell T. Lykes married Aimeria Bell McKay and their union produced eight children. Over the next 14 years, they welcomed seven boys and one girl, all born at home just west of Brooksville, near Citrus Way and Fort Dade Avenue. Dr. Lykes named Spring Hill the hill on which his house stood. So all his children are listed as born in Spring Hill, the original one, not the one that comes to mind, located over by Weeki Wachee.

By the mid-1870s, Dr. Howell Lykes had given up on medicine to oversee his family’s 500-acre farm. By the 1880s, the Lykes family sold cattle to Cuba and reinvested profits. They also had acres of citrus.

The Lykes family had over 3,500 acres of Florida citrus groves. After back-to-back freezes in 1894 and 1895, Dr. Howell Lykes moved his family south to Tampa to launch his sons in business.

Every son was put to work. The older ones, like Frederick and Lipscomb Lykes, managed the cattle and spent time in Cuba. Initially, they oversaw an office for cattle shipments, but they ended up building Cuba’s first modern meat-packing plant. Son Howell Tyson, Jr. was a banker and was assigned to bookkeeping and finances. And son John Wall Lykes knew all the ins and outs of insurance. There would be other duties for the remaining sons, Thompson, Joseph, and James.

Lykes Brothers, Inc. was founded in 1900. A decade later the original company shares belonged to seven individuals. As years went by, the family grew until a total of 83 men, women, and children had a piece of Lykes Brothers, Inc. It was 95 percent family-owned, whether by blood or by marriage, and amazingly, it owed no debt nor answered to any other stockholders.

Many people associate Lykes Brothers with cattle and that’s true. They accumulated some 60,000 head of cattle and owned over 675,000 acres of grazing land. They had a 350,000-acre ranch in South Florida and a 275,000-acre spread in West Texas. They held land in Cuba, too. When Fidel Castro took power, he confiscated their 15,000-acre ranch.

Many people don’t realize that the Lykes Brothers also developed their own shipping operation. The root of it goes back to the Civil War when they were shipping cattle to Confederate soldiers. Lykes Brothers Steamships became the largest US shipping line, with 54 cargo ships that traveled worldwide by the 1940s and 1950s. What started out as a way to ship cattle is now a way to deliver phosphate to Italy. They also often received general goods from places like London and South Africa and sent them to the Far East. The net worth of such a number of freighters was valued at over $100 million!

In 1961, the Lykes Brothers had a large packing plant in Tampa near the Seaboard Railway. It was a massive operation capable of processing thirty head of cattle per hour for ten hours a day. It provided jobs for upwards of 400 families who either worked in the plant or drove the delivery trucks. It was one of only a handful of federally inspected plants in Florida. Therefore, the Lykes Brothers could ship goods anywhere, state to state.

The Lykes Brothers were also leaders in citrus concentrate. For a time, they had one of the largest plants in Florida, shipping 15 million boxes per year. In 1978, it was reported that their orange juice concentrate facility in Dade City processed more than one million tons of citrus annually.
Dr. Howell Lykes continued to bring his stock (cattle) to Tampa and ship them directly to Cuba from his neighborhood in Ballast Point. At the turn of the century, he invested $1 million in real estate, purchasing four Tampa hotels for remodeling.

Sadly, he would not live to see his 60th birthday. He died on May 14, 1906, following several weeks of poor health and complications from a stroke. He and many other family members have a final resting place at the Lykes Family Cemetery on 16485 Fort Dade Avenue near the old homestead.

The Lykes family is known for its generosity. They donated land, which became the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. They made a significant donation in Brooksville to the Lykes Memorial Hospital, which served our county well from the 1960s to the 1980s. They also made a generous donation to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater.

Today, Lykes Brothers, Inc. remains private and family-owned. They manage cattle, citrus, farming, and forestry. They hold a large tract of land, some 337,000 acres, in south Florida in Glades and Highlands Counties. They are involved in water and land resources and recreational hunting.
Dr. Howell Tyson Lykes and his family have left quite a legacy.