The Explosive Growth of Homestead, Florida

"Bob Epling drives down one of Homestead's main roads and points to row upon row of brand-new condos and town houses with peach walls, red-tile roofs, and juvenile trees held up by wooden stakes.

'This was all potatoes and corn,' he tells the visitor in his passenger seat. 'If you came here three years ago, that would be all you'd see, as far as the eye can see.'

A few minutes later, he points out the Richards Tractor and Implements on Campbell Drive. A line of farm machinery is parked out front, but just down the street is a new multiplex and shopping center with a Chili's restaurant, Atlanta Bread Co., and a sushi shop.

'Our little town is changing,' says Epling, president of the Homestead-based Community Bank of Florida for the past three decades and a resident of the town for most of his life. 'The face is changing. It's a community in transition.'"