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

In the winter of 1894, one of the worst freezes in Florida history swept southward across the state, wiping out crops and citrus groves all the way to Palm Beach. The suffering he saw among farmers, growers, and laborers stunned Flagler. He sent James Ingraham, whom he had hired away from Plant, out on a private relief mission with $100,000 in

He decided to lay out a new town on the west shores of Lake Worth, where he would erect the terminal for his railroad. It was a fortuitous decision for Flagler, but one that was to have implications that persist to this day, with the “haves” living in the palatial estates of Palm Beach itself, and the “have-nots” in what was originally conceived of

Using the rule of thumb that experience had taught—one foot up for every foot of water below—Coe and Krome knew that this bridge had to be built on taller, more massive pilings than any before, in order to keep the rails above the reach of the worst hurricane-driven seas.

It was not so much that the value of Flagler’s holdings was threatened: by 1888 the value of Standard Oil shares had risen to more than $150 million, and even the eventual dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust was similar in financial impact to the reorganization, nearly a century later, of Ma Bell into all those little Baby Bells. For anyone who

Flagler realized he was in dire need of better transport service over the forty-mile route from Jacksonville, which was then the southern terminus of decent rail service in the state of Florida. As matters stood, to get from Jacksonville to St. Augustine required a leisurely cruise down the broad St. Johns River, then the boarding of a narrow-gauge

Flagler did not want for distractions from his devastated personal life, however. Hardly had he embarked upon a career in hotel-building than he realized that transporting customers to these emporia of delight was as important a link in the process as moving crude oil to his refineries had been so many years before.

In this case, for Flagler, there was something of a carryover from his former life. All that experience in railroading was about to be put to use in an entirely different context, as he tried to make sense of one of the most chaotic rail systems in the United States.

The Royal Palm was not only an impressive feature of the new city, but virtually the very reason for Miami’s being. Flagler was not dismayed at this, of course, for over the past dozen years he had seen development thrive in the wake of his method: build a railroad to a place, erect a…

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export