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Lehigh Acres was the first post World War II Florida retirement
community to be built, and now 40 years later it is still growing.
Lehigh Acres got its start in the mid 1950s when
Chicago businessman Lee Ratner needed a tax shelter. He had sold his pest control business, and he faced the possibility of
losing most of his earnings to the high capital gains tax of that era.
Ratner heard that cattle was a good investment
for people in his predicament, and he bought 20,000 acres (80 km²) of land in eastern Lee County and named it the Lucky Lee
Ranch.
After ranching for a while, Ratner envisioned this as a new community. It is due to his foresight that Lehigh
Acres has become the well balanced, thriving community it is today.
Since the days of Lucky Lee, the boundaries of
Lehigh Acres have stretched to cover 100 square miles (260 km²) and the pasture land where Ratner's cattle roamed has been
divided into quarter and half-acre (1,000 and 2,000 m²) lots for housing with larger tracts along major thoroughfares, such
as Homestead Road And Lee Boulevard, set aside for stores and business. Now Lehigh Acres has over 152,000 lots.
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