Joseph Landon Hickson (1857-1949) moved with his family to Dade County in 1903 and soon became active in citrus growing, real estate development, construction, and efforts to develop tropical agriculture in South Florida. His eldest son, Joseph Robert Hickson (1888-1947), also worked in citrus growing and developed a new avocado variety called the “Hickson.” In 1933, Joseph Landon Hickson bought this property from his son, where a simple wood frame house built circa 1900 of Dade County Slash Pine already stood. Typical of houses built by early homesteaders, it represents some of the area’s earliest architectural development. Hickson altered the house by adding one room on the west elevation, and the family planted citrus and avocado groves as well as numerous exotic plants on the property. In the mid-1930s, Hickson received a baobab tree from the Subtropical Horticultural Research Station that had originated in Tanzania in 1902, and it is reportedly the largest baobab tree in the United States. The house and property remained in the family until 1962.