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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

GORDON GRANGER

Another of the men who have influenced my life in some way or other, is Mr. R.G. “Gordon” Granger.

Mr. Granger had spent most of his life buying and selling timber and buying and selling timber land, and
for years he operated the sawmill at Watertown after the East Coast Lumber Company stopped doing
business there. After being in the sawmill business for years, apparently he decided to go into the retail
end of the lumber business also, and operated Granger Lumber and Supply on East Washington Street
up until the time of his death.

Having a ready supply of all types of lumber, he got into the business of subdividing land into lots, and
built a lot of houses in the northeast part of Lake City, in or near Watertown, and sold lots and houses to
many many people, and he financed them for them.

Apparently Mr. Granger was always patient in his dealings with people, and, although he didn’t allow
them to pay just any old way they pleased, apparently he did allow enough leniency that he very seldom
if ever had to foreclose on anybody.

He was a man of his word, and in your dealings with him you soon learned that he expected the same of
you, and that inspired people to try to treat him right, and he would treat them right.

Mr. Granger owned a tract containing 945 acres on US 90 about 9 miles west of Lake City, and he
named that tract of land the Bar None Ranch. He owned the greater portion of Ogden Lake, one of the
nicest lakes in the county, and he built a house on a high hill overlooking the lake, which he used on
weekends and other occasions as an entertainment place for his friends.

There was another large farm containing about 1700 acres just east of his Bar None Ranch, owned by
Mr. C.F. Johnson, who was a wealthy car dealer from South Florida, and he eventually leased the Bar
None Ranch to Mr. Johnson.

I was not aware that he had included in Mr. Johnson’s lease an option to purchase, and Mr. Johnson had
the right to exercise his option to purchase the Bar None Ranch and Ogden Lake at a set price, provided
he gave formal notification before midnight on a certain date.

Not knowing all this part about the option Mr. Johnson had the right to purchase, and since I was aware
that Mr. Granger practically never went to the Bar None Ranch anymore, 1 dropped by his lumber
business one day and talked with him in his office about attempting to buy the Ranch. We had a nice
conversation about it and actually agreed on a price for it and terms of payment, in the event that Mr.
Johnson did not exercise his option to purchase by the time the lease required. It seemed that his option
to purchase expired at the same time the lease ran out, unless he had given formal notification as to his
closing the purchase.

I learned that Mr. Granger did not have a real high opinion of Mr. Johnson, and he told me that Mr.
Johnson had promised him some things that he did not follow through on and I think the real root of the
problem between Granger and Johnson was that Johnson had cut some trees off of the Ranch which he
had leased, without the right to do so, and although Mr. Granger had probably cut a million trees in his
lifetime, if he wanted to save a tree, he really intended for that tree to be saved and not cut. Apparently
he fell out with Mr. Johnson about cutting some big Oak trees that he did not want cut.

The long and short of this is that he told me, and I can almost remember his exact words, “Dicks, I don’t
know if Johnson will exercise his option to buy the land or not. But if he does not notify me by the

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