Sublime

Thus, with Farley’s open cooperation, the trio of Hill, Kittson, and Smith began probing to see what sort of offer might be sufficient to interest the Dutch bondholders, who were understandably nervous about their jeopardized investment.

“As it is,” he told Carrere, “I have got to finish the work out of my income and I cannot expect to live long enough to do that.” As a result, Flagler confided, he had taken an unprecedented step, a secret “known to but one other person.” After talking the matter over with Krome, Flagler had gone into debt for the first time since the project had b

It was also the opposite of what he thought a revamped railroad needed—in-your-face contact with railcars. Harrison would soon announce that he was relocating head office to a rail yard. CP’s headquarters would be where the action was—next to the tracks.

In less than six years after it was finished, having covered all costs (including five years of major improvements from one end of the line to the other—new bridges, improved embankments) the railroad cleared more than $7 million. Stock dividends for nearly twenty years averaged 15 percent and went as high as 44 percent in 1868.

Year by year, Hill and his railroad organizations assembled an elaborate system of agricultural research and promotion.

Four years after arriving in Virginia, Walt quit working for NASA to start a consulting firm—User Systems, Incorporated—which he and Billie ran out of their home.

One of the hoariest, and most mischievous, of all the many legends surrounding Hill is the story, still widely repeated today, that rhapsodizes about how he built a great transcontinental line without the benefit of a federal land grant. This is considerably less than a half-truth. In fact, the Minnesota and Pacific received an initial grant of 2.4

An 1889 act of the Florida legislature set aside some 10 million acres of land to be deeded to entrepreneurs willing to build new railway lines and thereby bolster the state’s economic infrastructure. As a result, Flagler was able to lay claim to eight thousand acres for every mile of track he built. In the end, he would control more than two milli