Everglades holdout finally must go, but not quietly

Naples, Florida - Nothing will make Jesse James Hardy a happy man these days. Not the $4.95 million the state paid him for his land. Not the big and modern home he's buying with chandeliers and fancy-schmancy rooms such as a foyer and lanai.

And not his status as the last Everglades holdout in Collier County that elevated him into a folk hero.

"The Ballad of Jesse Hardy," sung by the Sawgrass Boys, sums up his feelings:

"Oh, Jesse's had his good times, and Jesse's had his bad,

But these are the worst times that he's ever had;

He's been deviled by greeners, and deviled by the mob

That come from Tallahassee to steal from him and rob!"

Hardy spits fire when he talks about having to move next month to his new $750,000 house that has just a few more amenities than the rustic cabin he built in the Everglades with his own sweat more than a quarter-century ago.

"You could have gold-plated plumbing, but it won't wash your hands any better than what I got now," he says.

He would prefer that the state take back the money it paid him for his 160-acre homestead and let him stay in the hinterlands east of Naples.

After a monumental battle with the state of Florida, the disabled Navy veteran and real-estate broker knows there's no way that will happen. Using its powers of eminent domain, the state now owns Hardy's property and has given him until Jan. 4 to move out.

But Hardy, 70, has no intention of going gently into that good night. Or into the suburbs.

He'll go -- just not quietly.

"I'm not going to shoot nobody. I'm not going to fight nobody. I will get the hell out of here," he said, walking along a canal that will be part of one of the most ambitious environmental restoration projects ever. "But I got took, and I will do everything I possibly can to ... to stop this eminent domain. ... Being quiet is acceptance."

A blustery man with a booming, expletive-laden drawl from his native North Florida, Hardy could no more keep his mouth shut than halt the taking of his property as the state marched forward with an $8 billion Everglades-restoration project.

For years, he rebuffed the state's efforts to buy the remote parcel of cabbage palms and scrub pine he bought in 1976 for $60,000 in South Golden Gate Estates, a failed development that scammers and schemers once envisioned becoming the largest subdivision in America.

There was nothing there back then. No electricity. No phone service. No sewers. No water. No neighbors. There's still nothing there, but Hardy says he has everything he needs. Through the years, he dug a well and built a sturdy little tin-roofed cabin out of wood he salvaged from the Port of Miami, where he once worked.

Eventually, he installed a septic-tank system and added some solar panels, fuel tanks and diesel-guzzling generators. Today, the one-bedroom house has most of the comforts of a modern home: a bathroom, water heater, two televisions, a stove, a refrigerator and a pair of window air conditioners. A recent addition, a brand-new Gateway computer, sits on a desk, connected to the Internet by a satellite dish.

But the house and the property are no longer Hardy's. He is, in essence, a squatter, the loser in a war that legal experts say was almost impossible to win. Under its powers of eminent domain, the state had only to prove that Hardy's land was necessary for a public purpose to seize it.

"I think it's offensive to all of us that, gee, the government can come take my property, but it has to be for a public purpose, and they have to pay full compensation," said Stephen Tabano, chairman of the Florida Bar's eminent-domain committee. "That's usually what the fight is about in these things: how much? But it's very hard to stop."

Florida first laid the groundwork for taking Hardy's land in 1985, when it began buying 55,247 acres of the bankrupt and largely abandoned South Golden Gate Estates. Environmentalists considered the tract vital to restoring the natural flow of the River of Grass and protecting the water supply.

Nearly 20 years and $121 million later, the state owned almost every inch of South Golden Gate Estates, except 800 acres claimed by the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians -- and Hardy's 160 acres. Environmentalists called his missing piece the "hole in the doughnut."

But year after year, Hardy refused offer after offer, starting with $711,725 in 2002, and ending with $4.5 million last year. By then, Hardy said, he had even more reasons for wanting to stay put: a family of his own.

In 1995, the niece of a family friend gave birth to a premature boy with severe medical problems. Tara Hilton, now 43, and little Tommy had nowhere to go. So they moved in with Hardy, who is raising the boy as his son. The youngster shares his bedroom, and Hilton sleeps on a daybed in the living room.

Today, despite dire predictions from doctors who said Tommy would never walk or talk, the 10-year-old is thriving. A nonstop chatterbox, he loves to play basketball and throw catfish chow and cracked corn into the lake with his daddy.

A year after Tommy's birth, Hardy said, he dug a test lake and stocked it with catfish, bream and tilapia to see whether his dream of establishing a fish farm could come true.

Like Tommy, the fish thrived, and Hardy and Hilton said they hatched bigger plans to dig four 20-acre lakes for recreational and commercial use. Contractors began excavating the first lake a few years ago, launching a quarry business that put money in Hardy's pocket. He viewed the business as his legacy, the one that would provide for Tommy and his medical needs for the rest of the boy's life.

But the offers from the state kept coming, and the pressures kept mounting with the price. So, too, did Hardy's status as a folk hero. Property-rights advocates from throughout the country rallied to his cause. One supporter created a Web site for him, jessehardy.com. Another wrote his ballad:

"Yes, in Florida's Collier County lives a good-ol'-hearted man. His name is Jesse Hardy, and he truly loves the land.

He wants to keep his homestead, and he doesn't stand alone. As he fights for his son Tommy for land to call his own.

And he fights for his son Tommy some land to call his own."

After Hardy turned down the $4.5 million last year, Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet authorized the state Department of Environmental Protection to begin eminent-domain proceedings.

And in April, the day before a scheduled court hearing to prove the taking was necessary, Hardy settled. The price: $4.95 million -- more than twice the $2.2 million a judge recently ruled the Miccosukee tribe should receive for five times as much land.

"Most people, when they hear how much he got, are aghast," said Nancy Payton, Southwest Florida field representative for the Florida Wildlife Federation. "It was beyond fair."

Fair? Hardy bristles at the notion. Forced into house-hunting, he said he has looked at a lot of property in Collier County and can't touch 160 acres for what he has in the bank.

"Do the math," he says. "One acre averages more than $50,000, so 160 acres at $50,000 an acre equals $8 million. I'm telling you, I got took. They stole my life."