How One Ranch Built America's Largest Cattle Empire in Florida: Deseret Ranch

How One Ranch Built America's Largest Cattle Empire in Florida: Deseret Ranch About forty minutes south of the castle at Walt Disney World, past the toll roads and the brand new subdivisions of Osceola County, the houses suddenly stop. What begins there is nearly 300,000 acres of cattle pasture, cypress swamp, and longleaf pine, a single ranch bigger than New York City. It runs one of the largest cow herds in America, it uses alligators to guard endangered birds, and it has turned down developer money for more than seventy years. But the strangest part of the story is who owns it. This ranch belongs to a church headquartered two thousand miles away in Salt Lake City, Utah. And the reason it exists starts with one unusual word. Deseret.