Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean

Whatever the final count, it is generally agreed that more than half of the thousand or so residents and workers caught on the Matecumbes that day lost their lives.

Flagler, who had never traveled to Europe, who had never been so far as California, found himself at age fifty-five, somehow arrived in Florida, in St. Augustine, and the result was transforming. “It was the oldest city in the United States,” wrote Edwin Lefevre in Everybody’s. “He saw the old slave market, he saw the old Spanish fort; he saw the o

Desperate for any ready source of cash, the right-of-way was sold to the state shortly after the disaster for $640,000, a sorry return indeed on a project that had required nearly $30 million, seven years, and the labor—and in quite a few cases, the lives—of a…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

He created a string of world-famous resorts all the way from St. Augustine to Key West, with a railroad to bring others to them, and when he had to do the impossible to reach that final destination, he rolled up his sleeves and he made it happen. Significantly enough, he did not ask Joseph Parrott if the Extension to Key West could turn a profit, b

As one writer of his time once put it, Henry Flagler went down to Florida “with its palms and red poinsettias, its white beaches and blue water, and so to speak, began life all over again.” A joke of the day had it that the…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

Some hoped for yet another rebirth of the Key West Extension, pointing to the fact that despite the devastation of much of the low-lying roadbed, Flagler’s mighty bridges had weathered the storm virtually unscathed. But already bankrupt and in the hands of a receiver, the FEC was in no position to rebuild anything, much less a project that Scientif

Following Hurricane Andrew’s assault on South Miami– Dade County in 1992, then-president George Bush flew over Homestead and its environs, and, even after that bird’s-eye view of things, returned to Washington, still undecided whether federal relief funds were truly necessary. Outraged community leaders demanded that Bush return for a street-level

The official Red Cross death toll was 408, but most agreed that the official count was low, that the final tally would never be known, owing to an uncertain Keys census and a general laxity in FERA’s record keeping. The Islamorada coroner put the figure at 423, but many informed estimates quickly suggested the total was over 600, for many bodies of

There are no more men like Henry Flagler, and there are no more dreams like his. Today we have software titans, and their minions who seek to bridge gaps measured in millimicrons and nanoseconds. Such accomplishment may be dizzying in its own right . . . but that kind of bridge-building…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export li