Snakes on a base

  • Published
  • By Nick Stubbs
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  When construction began on the 6,400-acre base that would become MacDill Field in 1941, it was a wild and overgrown thicket. It didn't take long for workers to discover that in those thickets, there was a dangerous threat that plagued the work crews.

The land was covered in rattlesnakes - and not just a few rattlesnakes.

Snakes were found by the thousands, and rather than simply kill and discard them, some enterprising people got together and opened a rattlesnake meat canning factory near the area that is now Gandy and Westshore. The operation was well supplied by the snakes from the base project, but continued on afterward, presumably having sourced snakes from other parts of Florida, into the 1950s.