After her visit to Sarasota in 1910, Mrs. Potter (Bertha) Palmer and her family began buying thousands of acres in the region. One large segment extended from their Sarasota-Venice Company's Bee Ridge development south to Laurel. The present 10,000-acre Palmer Ranch includes a portion of that land. In the 1930s, Palmer's son and daughter-in-law, Honore and Grace Palmer, began developing a cattle ranch south of Clark Road. There they introduced purebred Santa Gertrudis stock to improve the quality of a herd of 1,000 to 1,500 head, and the prize-winning quality of their purebred stock became widely recognized.