Bertha Palmer’s Cattle Dipping Vats Are Still at Myakka River State Park

Remnants of Bertha Palmer’s cattle dipping vats are still at Myakka River State Park. She had them built to fight tick fever on the ranch land she bought around Sarasota after 1910. After she died, her sons, Honore and Potter Jr., gave more than 1,900 acres of that land to the state in her memory, and it became part of the park, established in 1934.

Chicago First

Palmer was the leading figure in Chicago society and a serious art collector, and in 1891 she was elected president of the Board of Lady Managers for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Her husband, the hotel and real estate developer Potter Palmer, died in 1902. In 1910 she came to Sarasota.

Sarasota

She bought more than 80,000 acres, ran cattle, tried new crops and promoted the area to wealthy Northerners. Her winter estate, The Oaks, sat on Osprey Point on Little Sarasota Bay.

What to See

The Osprey Point estate is now Historic Spanish Point. Palmer died there on May 5, 1918.