And, in long ago 1923, what was to be The St. Joe Company bought its very first piece of piney woods in Florida’s Panhandle. As with all pioneering endeavors, few could see the advantage.
History pivots on fine points. Businesses do, too. After that initial purchase, for a couple of more decades, St. Joe kept buying cheap land on which to grow pines for its paper mill. Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s, for mere dollars an acre, St. Joe bought land in Northwest Florida that nobody else had a need for.
Today St. Joe owns around 608,000 acres, most all of it bought at bargain prices.
Imagine the space, if you can. It’s an area larger than the entire State of Rhode Island, making St. Joe the largest private landholder in Florida and, incidentally, steward of one of the least-altered sea coasts in America.
Long out of the paper and pulpwood business, now an innovative, even maverick land development company, St. Joe still has ahead of it a rare, perhaps historic opportunity.
It can grow and be green, too.