The growth of Okeechobee really began with the completion of the spur line of the Florida East Coast Railroad into Okeechobee. The construction of the line, running from Titusville, Florida to Okeechobee, Florida began in 1911. It took nearly four years for the construction to be completed.

On a bitter cold morning, January 4, 1915, the first paying passenger on the newly-initiated run stepped off the train after a 14-hour trip. In the pre-dawn cold, the train crew felt sorry for their lone passenger, so they built a campfire beside the train, and kept the passenger company until the raising of the sun. A young 19-year-old bank clerk by the name of Ellis Meserve was that first passenger, and he had come to Okeechobee to die. He has been told he had tuberculosis by doctors in St. Augustine and given less than a year to live. The Meserve family had relatives in Okeechobee, and it was thought that sending the young man further south where the weather was somewhat milder might prolong his life. How little did they know just what that decision would mean to not only the length of his life, but to the future of the small farming and fishing community nestled at the northern tip of Lake Okeechobee.

During an interview in July 1977, Ellis told of starting off across fields and pastures that cold morning after the sun arose, trying to find signs of human life. The train had deposited him at the site where the train depot would later be built, just about where The County Cooler is located at 701 N.W. Park Street at the railroad tracks. He said it seemed as though he walked for hours before finally arriving at Lewis Raulerson’s Store, which was then located on South Parrott Avenue and S.W. Fourth Street.

To keep himself busy, he decided to start a hardware business. He purchased a plot of land at a point half-way between Taylor Creek and the spot to the west where the train station was to be built. He foresaw this as being the center of town. During that 1977 interview, he admitted, "I missed by a few blocks." While erecting the building, he lived in a tent on the property, cooking outdoors and drawing water from the ponds in the near-by pastures.

Through the years, he added to the building and at one time had an apartment on the second floor with a porch expending over the sidewalk. From this vantage point, he and his wife watched the downtown area grow around them. Oh, yes, he quickly found a spouse. She was Faith Raulerson, the youngest daughter of Peter and Louisiana Raulerson, who are credited with the founding of Okeechobee in 1896, and one of the first white babies born in the area.

When Ellis opened the store in 1915, there were only a handful of white families living in the area., so the bulk of this trade was with the Indians. In return for this lumber, pots, pans and ammunition, he received egret plumes, seldom seeing "cash" money. The plumes were then sold to a dealer in New Orleans where they were in great demand in the fashion world at the time.

"Tantie," later re-named Okeechobee, was literally a wild frontier town in those early days. There were the commercial fishermen, hunters and trappers and the cowboys. None of the groups got along too well, and when they all arrived in town at the same time, you could be assured that quite a few fights would break out.