Henry Flagler and the Railroad

There are just 44 days until our next trip to Key West.  I've been working my way down through the Keys the past couple of weeks in my writing and I'm getting back into another part of the Keys that is among my favorites.  I am very much interested in the history of the Keys and the Florida East Coast Railroad.  By comparison to the Upper Keys and the Lower Keys, the Middle Keys are somewhat boring to me.  The history is not as rich, and from a traveler's perspective there is not as much to do or see as in the Upper Keys or Lower Keys.  To me, although I've vacationed in Marathon before, the Middle Keys have mostly been a place to either pass through or to set up camp as a matter of convenience.  Sort of like Henry Flagler did from 1908-1912.

Before we get into talking about this area though, let's talk a little bit about Henry Flagler.  Outside of Florida, Henry Flagler is not nearly as well-known as many of his contemporary industrialists and captains of industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Most people know the names - John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan.  Even Cornelius Vanderbilt and George Pullman probably enjoy more fame outside of Florida than Henry Flagler.

Flagler was born in upstate New York in 1830.  Despite never receiving higher than an 8th grade education, he worked a series of retail jobs and eventually used family assets to found a salt company in Michigan.  Flagler was the son of Elizabeth Morrison, who was the widow of a wealthy businessman named David Harkness from Ohio.  David Harkness had a son, Stephen, from his first marriage, which made Henry Flagler and Stephen Harkness stepbrothers.

After the failure of his salt venture in Michigan, Flagler moved to Bellevue, Ohio where he became a grain salesman.  Also selling grain in Bellevue was John D. Rockefeller, who befriended Flagler.  After the civil war, Rockefeller left the grain business, moved to Cleveland and started an oil refinery.  Needing some investment, he approached Flagler, who secured $100,000 from the Harkness family.  In return, the Harkness family appointed Flagler their representative in the new venture.  The new venture proved lucrative and soon became the Standard Oil company.  Standard Oil quickly became a monopoly and made Rockefeller, Flagler, Harkness and their partners among the richest men in history.

By 1876, Flagler's first wife. Mary, had become very ill and Flagler's doctor advised they move from New York and Ohio to a warmer climate.  Henry and Mary Flagler spent much of the next five years traveling back and forth to Jacksonville, Florida until Mary died in 1881.  Flagler wasted no time marrying Ida Alice Shourds, who had been his Mary's nurse toward the end of her life.  For a honeymoon, Flagler and Ida traveled to St. Augustine, where Flagler tried to buy the Zorayda Castle (then the Villa Zorayda hotel) for his new wife.  He was unsuccessful, but the Florida bug had bitten him and bitten him hard.

Three years later, in 1884, Flagler stepped down from operation of Standard Oil and returned to St. Augustine.  He made Franklin Smith, owner and builder of the Zorayda Castle, an offer to become his partner in a new hotel venture.  Smith couldn't raise the money, so Flagler ended up building it himself - the enormous (for its time) Ponce De Leon Hotel.  Despite the time period (1884-1888), the Ponce De Leon was wired for electricity - due, in no small part, to Flagler's personal friendship with Thomas Edison.  The hotel still stands today and is part of Flagler College.

Now entrenched in Florida, Flagler envisioned an American Riviera stretching down the Florida Coast, but was unhappy with the transportation system in the state.  With his enormous amount of money, he purchased a number of small railroads and consolidated them into the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC).  Thus began his march down the coast, building rails, bridges and hotels along the way.  By 1890, his railroad had arrived in Daytona Beach and he had begun construction of a personal residence in St. Augustine.  By 1894, he arrived in West Palm Beach, building the Royal Poinciana Hotel, and essentially founded Palm Beach by building the Breakers Hotel on the coast.

Flagler intended to stop in West Palm Beach in 1894, but that same year extreme cold in the area killed off the citrus crop and caused Flagler to rethink this decision.  Legend has it that Miss Julia Tuttle (she of causeway fame) sent Flagler some fresh citrus from an outpost on the Miami River in 1894, as proof that the cold did not extend that far.  She offered him land on which to build a hotel in exchange for bringing the railroad south to serve her fruit-trading business.

By 1896, Flagler had reached the shores of Biscayne Bay, and true to form, began construction of the Royal Palm hotel.  When the city incorporated in 1896, the original proposal was to name the city "Flagler", but Flagler would not hear anything of it, and it was he that suggested the city be named after the Indian word for the river that flowed through it.  Thus was born the city of Miami.

Around the same time, his wife Ida was institutionalized for mental illness.  Flagler had long been suspected of having an affair with Mary Kenan, and in 1901, Florida made mental illness grounds for divorce largely based on lobbying efforts from non other than Flagler himself and his connections with the Florida judicial circuit.  Flagler promptly divorced Ida, married Mary Kenan, and moved to Palm Beach in a mansion called "Whitehall" that he built as a wedding present to his new wife.

Flagler mostly stayed put for the next 4 years, but he had his eye even further southward.  The Spanish-American war saw much shipment of troops, material and supplies from Florida to Cuba, and the United States was also heavily involved in a plan to build a canal through Panama to open up trade from the east coast to the Pacific.  Seeing an opportunity to establish a deep water port close to Cuba and Panama, Flagler began planning for the extension of his railroad to Key West.  Many thought that Flagler had totally lost his marbles at this point, as the idea was thought impossible and downright crazy by most.  But when asked how he intended to build a railroad across 100 miles of open water, Flagler simply replied "Easy - first you build one concrete arch, then another, and another, and pretty soon you'll be in Key West."

Location of the FEC Railroad in Key West

Flagler did just that.  By 1905 he had engineers scouting routes through extreme south Florida -  considering routes through Jewfish Creek, Card Sound, and even an ambitious route to Cape Sable and across 25 miles of open water.  Eventually, the Jewfish Creek route was selected and construction began.  By 1908, the railroad had terminated in Knight's Key.  The plan was to complete construction by 1913, but construction was accelerated when Flagler's health started failing and was finally completed on January 21, 1912, and the first train rolled into Key West the very next day.  Frail and nearly blind, Flagler arrived in Key West on that first train in his luzurious personal car, the "Rambler".  There was much celebration in Key West with dignitaries and schoolchildren greeting the train's arrival.  Flagler is reported to have said "I can hear the children, but I cannot see them," and later, "Now I can die in peace."

Key West is largely what it is today thanks to Flagler.  Even the landscape of Key West was forever changed by the railroad.  As the railroad approached Key West, Flagler had grandiose plans for a very large rail terminal in the city.  When Flagler was advised that there simply was not enough land in Key West on which to build his expansive terminal, he replied, in typical Flagler fashion, "Well then BUILD some."  Today the Trumbo Point area exists because of the many tons of fill that Flagler's engineer's dumped there to build the land upon which his terminal was constructed.