Today the Florida-based agribusiness is a diverse enterprise that includes cattle, citrus, farming, forestry, hunting, land and water resource management.
In the 1870s Dr. Howell Tyson Lykes abandoned a medical career in Columbia, South Carolina and took over a 500-acre (2.0 km2) family cattle ranch in rural Hernando County north of Tampa.
This corporation would come to comprise interests in land, citrus, phosphate mining, timber (eucalyptus, pine), sugarcane, a major shipping line (Lykes Brothers Steamship Company), cattle and meat processing, banking (First Florida Bank) and Lykes Insurance Company.
A leader in citrus concentrate, the $15 million Lykes Pasco citrus-processing plant was the biggest in Florida.
The corporation took a blow when La Candelaria, the 15,000-acre (61 km2) Lykes estate 250 miles (400 km) east of Havana, was nationalized during the Cuban Revolution.