In 1895 George Washington Hopkins of Michigan began buying land in eastern Osceola and Brevard County and founded the Union Cypress Company, which operated a saw and planing mill in Hopkins, a small town south of Melbourne. Deer Park was founded to provide homes for workers in the logging and mill operation, and it included a post office, two general stores, a hotel, boarding houses, churches, and two schools. A railroad built in 1911-12 ran across the St. Johns River to transport logs, workers, mail, goods, and groceries. Hopkins' son-in-law, W.H. Kempfer, arrived in 1914 to run the timber operations, and in 1915 Hopkins and Kempfer Land and Cattle Co. was formed and continued until Hopkins' death. In 1925 N. Ray Carroll of Bedford, Ohio, later a State Senator from Osceola County, acquired 55,000 acres of land on the north side of US 192 from the Hopkins estate, and it later became the Carrollton Ranch. In 1950 he sold the ranch to a group of Mormon businessmen, the first Mormon land acquisition in Florida, and they now own some 330,000 acres in three counties. On the south side of US 192 is the Kempfer Ranch, which has been operated by the descendants of George Washington Hopkins for over 100 years, and great-grandsons Billy and Reed Kempfer and their families continue to run the ranch and sawmill.