Clewiston, Florida - Old South BBQ Ranch - Gone

"Old South BBQ Ranch--Where Eatin's Real Fun!" Another famous attraction of the US Route 27 gateway to south Florida is gone forever. Signage along Route 27 once extended for hundreds of miles northward in the days before interstate freeways, full of homespun sayings with all the charm of the long-gone Burma Shave signs. The attraction itself was a simple BBQ restaurant, but done up with a wild west theme -- curious enough for the Florida locale at the southern edge of Lake Okeechobee.

The outside was full of fiberglass 'old west' characters, wagon wheels, and punny signs adorning the building and parking lot. The inside was full of old west decor and bric-a-brac, and the waitresses wore Dale Evans-style cowgirl costumes with toy holsters.

I discovered the place on my first visit to Florida in 1974, and always made sure to stop by for a meal whenever business would take me back every few years. The food was usually pretty good enough and I last sampled it in the summer of 1998. Then I came back through Clewiston in July 2001 and -- horrors! -- it was all gone. The cop who stopped to ask what I was looking for said that it had been gone a couple years. Only the familiar but nondescript shape of the building remained to guide me -- all traces of the wild west decor outside were gone, replaced by a fenced lot for storing the boats of the new business inside. [Chris Hobbs, 05/26/2002]

The Old South Bar-B-Q Ranch in Clewiston is closed. It is for sale. [Craig S. Thom, 05/13/1999]

On US 27, south of Lake Ochechobee, is the Old South Bar-B-Q Ranch. At one time they had billboards up and down US 27 advertising the place for many a mile. They have cowboy and cow mannequins in the parking lot and continue with the country cowboy theme inside. The walls are adorned with various antique farm implements and country jokes. The bar-b-q isn't bad either. It'd make a good lunch stop on a trip out to the Cypress Knee Museum, especially since there isn't a whole lot out that-a-ways. I was last out that way in the winter of 1996, and they were still operating then. [Rich Todd, 06/15/1998]