One of the reasons the farmhouse has been considered historic is its link to Ralph A. Horton.
In 1980 the Davie Historical Society recognized Horton as one of the Early Pioneer Farmers honored at Broward County's Pioneer Days.
Promoter of Everglades farming
Horton was one of the early boosters of farming on the newly drained Everglades land. In 1916 he was quoted in the newspapers praising the farming future of the Everglades and inviting the 1917 Florida Legislature to come and see it for themselves. By 1919 he was secretary of the Everglades Drainage and Development League.
State support for drainage came at a price, paid in drainage taxes. In 1919 Horton represented local farmers in a class action against the Everglades Drainage District to recover money they had paid under protest for "illegal taxes."
Builder and Businessman
Horton was a prominent local businessman who wore many hats. He was an investor who bought and sold land and built many houses and cottages. After the Miami Hurricane of 1926, he also offered reconstruction loans.
Horton bought this 20-acre tract in October 1919 and built the first house on it around 1922, a two-story house with a water tower. The 1926 hurricane blew the house away, but the water tower and the concrete piers survived. Around 1928, he built the new, sturdier house in its place, which is the house that stands today.
In the late 1920s, Horton also advertised groves and farms around Davie for sale or rent as a real estate broker. He sold land next to the Walsh grove, which covered much of today's Cooper City. The "water-controlled farm for rent" Horton advertised in 1929 may have been this farm.
Drainage and flood control
The canals that opened the area to farming were built mainly for drainage and irrigation, not flood control. As chairman of the drainage board in 1927, Horton argued for spending funds on a levee system to prevent flooding. In 1930 a Davie grower blamed the system Horton supervised for ruining his crops. Horton welcomed a study by the Florida Agricultural College and answered with a petition supporting him, signed by 56 local growers. One of the signers was C.R. Yeager, a "grove and truck farmer," who owned this farm at the time.
A 1929 Miami Herald photograph shows Horton at a meeting of the state Drainage Board in Miami.