Flagler's Train - The Florida Keys Over-Sea Railroad

this program is brought to you in part by [Music] always be unaffected the Florida Keys and Key West and by the following Flagler a coral gables-based commercial real estate company the Florida East Coast Railway essentially was Henry Flagler Railway the idea of building this great railroad along with the building of the Panama Canal this was just part of what we as Americans did we did great things there was such optimism in the air I think people really thought that they could do anything they dreamed [Music] what Flagler did was simply an extension of his and the country's greatness he saw himself as part of America's Destiny as a critical player he invested his fortune in the development of the East Coast of Florida but it was pretty risky not too many people were in a position to take that kind of risk the work was so tough most men didn't last more than a few months it was never easy this was a time when labor was at war with capital the Key West newspapers are saying basically Our Only Hope of ever having a railroad rest with Henry Flagler the Titanic was being built and the Panama Canal was being constructed but within our Shores this was the most important thing everyone who is involved in it believed it thought it could be done they were going to make it there simply had never been anything like it attempted in U.S or world history [Music] thank you more than two decades after the last Spike was driven to complete the Transcontinental Railway in 1869. the vast Florida Wilderness was America's Last Frontier [Music] the nation was flourishing from the Atlantic to the Pacific yet Florida remained almost as remote from civilization as the heart of Africa Miami was a virtual Outpost of a thousand people a couple thousand people in Jacksonville Tampa with four thousand Key West had 22 000 people at the time it was a thriving Naval Station coaling Center turtling and fishing capitals Center of cigar making far more important than any place else in Florida and an important U.S port here we were approaching the beginning of the 20th century in a major city like Key West existed and you couldn't get to it except by boat imagine that the first railroad in America ran in 1830 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad but as early as 1836 an article appeared in a journal or a magazine or a newspaper at the time propounding a railroad to Key West now this was incredible Florida was uninhabited essentially and yet this idea of a railroad going to Key West would continue on through the decades [Music] only a few people believe that Florida was anything more than a tangled wilderness one of them was Henry Morrison Flagler a successful New York businessman searching for a challenge Flagler saw Florida as a land filled with opportunity waiting to be connected to the developing Nation if Flagler was an interesting character because he started off in a very humble family but it was very industrious and he was making money and he became a partner in standard oil and of course that was the most successful company and he and Rockefeller were very very very successful foreign politicians attack Standard Oil the corporation was under investigation by the state of New York and the U.S government John D Rockefeller and Henry Flagler were called to testify in antitrust cases and this was very frustrating to Flagler he did not like the government interfering in what he considered his private business affairs and of course the the preeminent trust Buster of the day was Theodore Roosevelt who became president in 1901 a few years later when Roosevelt was going off to Africa to hunt lions Henry Flagler writes I wish good hunting to the Lions so Henry Flagler was no friend of Teddy Roosevelt because Teddy Roosevelt was an enemy of Standard Oil Flagler was 53 when he retired from the day-to-day operations of the corporation yet dividends from his company stocks continued to Surge like an uncapped oil well more than enough to feel his interest in finding a new challenge Flagler could see what was happening in Florida he lived on Fifth Avenue in New York City and one of his neighbors was Henry B Plant and Henry plant was a railroad builder in the South and was extending his railroads down the peninsula of Florida Flagler invested money and plants Corporation at first so that must have given him some experience and some ideas about the potential of Florida and he decided in the winter of 1885 that he would build a hotel in Saint Augustine not just an ordinary big wood frame Resort hotel which was typical of the days but rather to build well to build the best resort hotel in the world my hardest problem was the Ponce de Leon said Flagler how to build a hotel to meet the requirements of 19th century America and yet be in keeping with the character of the place Architects Thomas Hastings and John carrer designed the hotel like a Spanish Castle a perfect fit with Old Saint Augustine Tiffany Glass murals painted by George Menard woodwork by patier and stymus and gilded plaster moldings Grace the Rotunda the Hotel Ponce de Leon was The Wonder of its day [Music] but Flagler didn't stop there he built another hotel the Alcazar with a huge pool and therapeutic baths [Music] he purchased a third Hotel the Cordova then set about enhancing Saint Augustine Paving the streets building Memorial Church a hospital and City Hall and most importantly improving the railroad the Jacksonville St Augustine and Halifax River Railroad was a ramshackle Narrow Gauge train running from Jacksonville to Saint Augustine with a ferry Crossing on the Saint Johns River a streak of rust and a right-of-way declared Flagler the train carried building materials and guests Bound for flagler's hotels but often arrived late or not at all due to outmoded equipment and chronic breakdowns on December 31st 1885 he purchased Lock Stock and Barrel track Ties on all equipment that Railroad on that day Henry Flagler was in the railroad business not because he wanted to or had any intention of becoming a great railroad magnet but because he had no choice it was from that purchase of that 30-mile Railroad that Henry Flagler would become one of the great railroad entrepreneurs in American history [Music] like the legend of Juan Ponce de Leon Flagler came to Florida looking for a fountain of youth he found it in his second career as a hotel and railroad developer often Henry plant has talked about as have doing a similar thing on the west coast but the truth is that Henry plant wasn't investing his own money he managed to find backers among them Henry Walters and Henry Flagler helped bankroll his expansions in Florida Flagler and plant sat down one day on Mr plant's yacht and in a private meeting made an agreement and that agreement was we're not going to put it in writing but we're not going to make the terrible mistakes that people like Gould and Harriman and Morgan and Vanderbilt made in building the railroads of the Northeast and building the railroads of the west where people are shooting each other trying to cross their railroad lines we are going to agree that Henry Flagler you will stay on the East Coast Henry plant you will stay on the west coast and we'll be good friends will be friendly competitors for Florida business but we're not going to impede on each other's territory flagler's Florida East Coast Railway had a provision in its Charter allowing it to build further south into the Daytona Beach area it was becoming clear that the weather in South Florida was more dependably tropical than Saint Augustine's winter freezes and along the way were untapped business opportunities in flagler's mind extending the railroad South was inevitable but it was pretty risky pretty worthless land unless his railroad succeeded in bringing in the Commerce and the settlers that they hoped it would and not too many people in a position to take that kind of risk Flagler acquired smaller railroads then linked them to his own tracks as he expanded the Florida East Coast Railway down the peninsula at Lake Worth and Palm Beach he developed two communities and built the world's largest hotel the Royal Poinciana Flagler bought the Palm Beach Inn and turned it into a second Resort the breakers Henry Flagler was thinking about things in a very big way from very early on within a few years of his building a hotel Ponce de Leoni his vision was freely for the whole peninsula of Florida and the Bahamas and Cuba long before I even got to Palm Beach he was thinking about building a railroad to Key West and had locked up his options so he could do just such a thing if he ever had the opportunity flagler's Vice President Joseph R Parrott directed the railways extension and the birth of entire towns like West Palm Beach Fort Lauderdale and Miami from the Verandas of flagler's five-story Royal Palm Hotel guests enjoyed panoramas of Biscayne Bay and the Miami River FEC rails penetrated the Farmland of the lower Peninsula creating an agricultural industry and a settlement named Homestead I really think he saw himself in the way a lot of 19th century Americans of his ilk saw themselves as sort of the Crossroads of Destiny and history and really hoping that you have an opportunity to make some contribution to demonstrate that America was taking its rightful place in history and in the world [Music] I think it was actually Mark Twain that coined the phrase the Gilded Age and the Gilded Age meant that people have more time and they had more money and they were able to accomplish things that they hadn't really been able to accomplish before and when Henry Flagler built Whitehall for his third wife he spared no expense and it was as gracious and as beautiful a home as any Castle [Music] [Music] life was full of enthusiasm and the technology was changing so fast I mean it's hard for us to think about now in the 21st century when it seems like things are moving faster than ever before but in the beginning of the 20th century there were so many more important discoveries and so many more projects that had never been attempted before like the Panama Canal or flagler's railroad and people thought it could be done and in fact it could [Music] Flagler knew that trains were the key to development and he invested widely in railroads including a system in Cuba he envisioned huge fairies carrying entire trains between Havana and Key West completing a through rail route linking Cuba with New York thank you with the passage of the Panama Canal Purchase Act in 1902 it looks certain that the United States would complete the canal linking the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans Flagler saw the opportunity he had been waiting for and summoned his engineers Henry Flagler commissioned a number of studies and those studies said that if the railroad was extended to the nearest deep water Port Miami was not a deep water port at that time that all of those Ships coming through the newly to be built Panama Canal would head for the nearest deep water American port and so the studies showed that that nearest deep water American Port would be at Cape Sable on Florida's southwest coast flagler's engineer William J Chrome and his survey party battled Sawgrass Marsh and mosquitoes to map a direct route across the Everglades to Cape Sable a journey through territory he described as a most god-forsaken region and when they came back somewhere five and a half to six months later almost devoid of clothing without any of their instruments all that Mr Chrome had been able to salvage were his notebooks thank goodness and they were so weak that they had to be helped up on the train and when Mr Chrome recovered and he came in to see Mr Flagler and Mr Flagler said to him well Mr Chrome what do you have to say what do you think Mr Chrome said Mr Flagler there is not enough fill on the face of the Earth to build a railroad across the Everglades and with that the people of Key West were simply Overjoyed because they knew that their time had come Key West Harbor was the next closest deep water port in January of 1904 parrot sent engineer Chrome to survey the route from homestead to Key Largo then continue all the way down to Key West a long bad job in mosquito time wrote Chrome in his diary it will be a hard trip but I am glad to be back at work again [Music] construction engineer Joseph Carroll Meredith had just completed a half mile long concrete pier at Tampico Harbor in Mexico his success with difficult projects was well known throughout the railroad and Construction Industries Flagler needed a chief engineer for the Key West extension project and called Meredith for a meeting Flagler was looking for a man who believed this could be done and who had the expertise to be able to do it engineering wise and in Meredith he found his man chief engineer Meredith delivered his construction studies to Flagler let's get to work he told Meredith I want to see it done before I die 28 Mile Long Key West extension Meredith had to solve the problem of moving men and Equipment through marshes mangroves and open stretches of ocean chief engineer Meredith's first test was building a railroad embankment from homestead to Key Largo no one had ever dared to lay tracks across 20 miles of Everglades his solution was to outfit four barges with cranes and shovels who barges started out near Homestead traveling south two more began at jewfish Creek near Key Largo heading north until they all met in the middle the dredges dug parallel canals scooping the mud onto an embankment between them then floating forward the digging was repeated [Music] foreign the rails were spiked in place in November of 1906 the first locomotive rolled off a barge and onto the tracks to help move men and materials on Key Largo rows of tents were staked out in a camp for men who were blasting the Bedrock and carving a right-of-way through the hardwood jungle at times the construction would demand as many as four thousand men working around the clock the workforce ran the gamut from skilled equipment operators to Machinists the Carpenters and Cooks to construction divers and a steady stream of laborers working with picks shovels and wheelbarrows recruiting enough workers was a never-ending task they went so far as to advertise in Europe they brought in Scandinavians they brought in swedes they brought in people from the United States they brought in people from the Bahamas essentially putting to work as many people as they could find everything I read about Henry Flagler the people that worked for him how they felt about him he was a good man and there were often reports about oh workers were recruited in New York when they first got off the boats from Ireland or Spain or Italy I had no idea what they were getting into because it was very difficult work but Henry Flagler treated them well and he did have a wonderful support organization so people were well cared for a lot of them liked it better than some of the labor jobs elsewhere this was the time when they were building the subway systems in New York City and some of the diapers had moved down from New York City labor jobs and they like the keys a whole lot better it wasn't wet cold and dark it was a real challenge and sometimes you got guys who are lying around doing not much of anything who were lured by unscrupulous labor recruiters who said oh geez come down to paradise and work and and make good money and they they got down to paradise and found out that it was 95 degrees and the humidity just as high and the mosquitoes as thick as clouds and that every mile that the railway pushed away from Miami was one more mile further away from civilization those were pretty daunting conditions there was a suit brought against Flagler alleging unfair labor practices and unreasonable labor practices but it was dismissed summarily in District Court because it was proven that yeah it was tough work but nobody was keeping any slaves drill gangs opened holes for Dynamite and blasted the Bedrock into pieces thank you [Music] men worked 10-hour days and six day weeks moving tons of rock to fill Railroad trestles and build embankments as high as 10 feet above sea level mule-drawn wagons hauled Rock from quarries on Key Largo Plantation key and windley's key dredges and steam-powered pumps move sand and rock to build causeways that extended the tracks to lower matakumbi throughout the keys FEC projects were constructed in sections and then joined when completed the next great challenge was the Long Key Viaduct a structure that would Bridge more than two miles of Open Water between Long Key and Conkey by October of 1906 Meredith and his Engineers had met every test of their skills with Ingenuity and determination but while workers prepared the right-of-way on Long Key nature fought back foreign quarters and mess Halls were on board two-story houseboats called quarter boats railroad management made a decision that in the event of a hurricane the safest place for the men would be inside the securely moored quarter boats the poor souls who in 1906 were told you're going to be safe on the quarter boats and then were subjected to these Winds of 150 and 160 miles an hour and then felt the quarter boats being ripped away from their Moorings and all of a sudden they realize that the quarter boats are breaking apart and they're 8 10 12 miles out in the water and the water is 15 18 22 feet high in terms of the Waves nobody could survive that it was a tragic lesson for the Florida East Coast Railway from then on the men would be sheltered on land Flagler and his men were determined to continue the project to Key West foreign as workers were reorganized and the storm damaged tracks were repaired chief engineer Meredith remarked no man who cannot stand grief should be connected with this Enterprise [Music] reached the matakumi keys in June of 1907. where the FEC established Central Supply to stockpile materials for construction of a Long Key Viaduct [Music] Supply trains delivered sand and Limestone from Central and Southern Florida steel and coal arrive by rail from the northern states granite rock was shipped from as far away as Maine the first thing you need to realize when building a railroad across the ocean is everything has to be brought there there were no resources in the keys initially for them to use there was no fresh water which they're going to need for driving their steam engines for mixing with their concrete every drop of water had to be brought down they had barges with huge tanks on them they'd bring it down from halfway up the Everglades Mississippi Paddle Wheel Steamers move supplies and equipment in the shallow Waters of the Florida Keys where most vessels ran aground [Music] one disheartened boat captain called it not quite enough water for swimming and too much for farming The Long Key Viaduct was designed with concrete piers and arched spans 50 feet in length tracks were set on top of the Arches 30 feet above the water in order to build a bridge first you've got to put piers in the water they did this by first setting cuffer dams which are wooden forms that have no bottom they're just sitting there in the water and they're full of water they poured the first level of concrete right in the bottom of these Coffer dams right underwater when the concrete sets they can pump the water out of the Coffer Dam then climb in the hole that they've made in the water and built the forms they need for the rising Pier the pier comes out clears the top of the water and then they can actually take the Comfort Dam away at that point on all the forms then the pier is ready for the next step which is putting spans across the piers Carpenters built wooden art forms and side walls for the spans then hoisted them into place with steam-powered Derricks [Music] steel rods built into each lower Pier section secured the bonds with the upper Arch when the cement mixers went to work [Music] enormous quantities of imported Marine concrete were poured to create 180 arches it was a costly and time-consuming project but on January 22nd 1908 Henry Flagler rode the first train to cross the Long Key Viaduct it has the aspect of a Roman aqueduct a journalist wrote arches march across the water into the horizon [Music] the Florida East Coast Railway had a fleet literally a fleet of several hundred boats including ocean-going Steamers which were used to bring the concrete back from Germany and besides these boats there were water borne pile drivers there were all kinds of watercraft they were out in the middle of the ocean essentially and they had to have the craft that could carry the men they had to have the barges and the scows they had to have tugboats it was its own Navy but in July of 1907 Flagler ran into a conflict with the U.S Navy there was not enough land at Key West Harbor for the new FEC terminal docks so Flagler was authorized by the federal government and the State of Florida to dredge and fill 134 Acres of new land a green to replace the fill at a later date the site was named crumbo point after the Project's chief engineer Howard Trumbo but the Navy wrote a contract requiring The Fill to be replaced in a more costly location Flagler was outraged on July 17th Meredith ordered the dredges shut down and all operations south of Knights key suspended indefinitely if I could swore he would put all the employees out of the Lower Keys and end the extension at Knight's key and Marathon which was actually already in operation by that time this was enough over the six-month period of political pressure so the Navy finally gave in and Flagler goddess Phil during the shutdown at Trumbull Point nearly a thousand workers were relocated to the middle keys to work on the causeways and wooden trestles that extended the tracks from Conkey to kivaka the FEC moved its Key West extension headquarters from Miami to kivaka in 1908. creating a Supply Depot and administrative complex called Marathon the adjoining boot key Harbor became a permanent repair facility for FEC watercraft and equipment two miles Southwest of marathon the island of pigeon key was a Connecting Point for the seven mile bridge and an ideal location for Housing and Storage on October 11 1909 a hurricane lashed out the wind blew so hard that men had to hold the tracks while walking the marathon for shelter remembering the tragic loss of life during the 1906 hurricane the FEC provided shelter for the men in land-based dormitories there was a group of people like maybe 300 workers on pigeon key who spent the entire day of the hurricane inside one of the main cement buildings a cement storage building and they all thought it was the end of the world W.R Hawkins a draftsman and machine shop manager at boot key Harbor wrote in his diary as soon as the second half of the blow eased I got up on the Pilot House of the Virginia to look for Pigeon key with my field glass I saw the cement house standing and felt sure they had fared pretty well J.H Brown who was timekeeper at boot key Harbor Hawkins continued was aboard the houseboat betta he refused to go ashore when his companions did poor old brown was killed although boats and Equipment sank or were damaged in the storm most were pumped out repaired and sent back to work foreign Marathon was a reliable Supply Depot but Meredith still needed a port for ocean-going vessels to unload heavy materials some ships Drew 20 feet of water his solution was the construction of an offshore dock connected to night ski by a railroad trestle what they did was the track left the right-of-way at night's key went out into the water went under the seven mile bridge and actually went almost three quarters of a mile out into the Atlantic to this big terminal they built called the Knights key terminal and for three years between 1909 and 1912 that is where the FEC trains terminated at night's key on the docks foreign [Music] construction materials were transferred between ships and rails at the Knights key dock passenger trains connected with flagler's steamship line Bound for Key West and Havana foreign but work on the extension came to a halt at night's key Flagler was running out of funds and for the first time as a railroad Builder he needed to borrow money up until that point all this building had been done not with State money or with grants or or financed by taxes this the Florida East Coast Railway essentially was Henry Flagler Railway and only his modesty kept it from being publicly apparent otherwise the eighth wonder of the world and I think that the people at Henry Flagler chose were dedicated to the project and I believe that it was the project in the United States I mean the Titanic was being built in the Panama Canal was being constructed but within our Shores this was the most important thing and I think everyone who was involved in it believed it thought it could be done they were going to make it chief engineer Meredith's dedication to the project was striking he once told a journalist there isn't one of us who wouldn't give up a year of his own life to have Mr Flagler see the work completed Meredith was facing the most demanding work of his career when he suddenly collapsed on April 20th 1909.

Mr Meredith came in on a boat in very bad shape this morning wrote Dr J.M Jackson in Miami he died at 12 40.

J.C Meredith had been feeling bad for some time but was so game that none of us knew that the end was so near flags were flown at half-mast as W.R Hawkins read the newspaper story to machinists at boot key Harbor they joined hands prayed and sang hymns in honor of Meredith the work took its toll and four years of of that wore him out to the point where he expired but never complained not because uh Flagler drove him to work that way but because Meredith himself was so immersed by by all accounts in in the project and and its rigors [Music] Flagler and parrot put their confidence in Meredith's assistant William J Chrome promoting him to engineer in Chief to guide the railroad project to its completion construction of the extension progressed throughout the keys as railroad sections on land were joined by trestles and short bridges at the waterways but the bridge between Knights key and little duck key was the most demanding work the engineers had encountered it would cross seven miles of ocean a task never before attempted an American railroad building foreign Bridge was under construction the terrific job and there were a lot of workmen who were working in shifts 24 hours a day to complete this project but I can't think that they didn't at the end of the day look across the water and wonder why they couldn't see the other side because it was a tremendous task and I think today when people come down and they drive down the highway and they look at the Arches and they think wow that was a lot to build they can't have any of the sense of wonder that the people had during that effort coming to work working in the water preparing the bridge span and then looking across and not seeing any land there must be some sort of thing that says to you how far do we need to go the seven mile bridge was constructed in four sections the passage channeled Viaduct the Moser Channel Bridge the pigeon Key Bridge and the Knights key bridge Coffer dams were used to create the concrete piers steel beams and deck plates were bolted to the top of the piers in the deep water sections a faster and less expensive method than pouring concrete arches [Music] ships pass through Moser Channel where steel truss swing Bridge was built a temporary Trestle was installed at span number 36 on the Knights key bridge to allow clearance for The Trestle beneath it a steel span would later take its place when the railroad was completed [Music] 546 concrete Piers to complete the bridges spanning seven miles of Open Water once it became obvious that Mr Flagler was beginning to fail he was losing his eyesight his hearing was starting to deteriorate Mr Parrott at that point said to Mr Chrome you must increase the pace of the construction the chief is failing and we must make certain that we reach Key West while he is still alive but to get to Key West Chrome and his Engineers face the greatest bridge building challenge of the entire project the Bahia Honda Channel this bridge would cross the deepest water and swiftest currents in the entire island chain some said it couldn't be done the water was quite deep there the deepest part was 40 feet deep throughout the rest of the keys the deepest water was only 20 feet at most in a lot of places we're talking five to six feet of water the problem with the Deep Waters you need very very tall Piers 40 feet underwater and another 20 feet above the water that's a lot of concrete that's a lot of Steel that's a lot of pouring that's a lot of things that can go wrong and some of them did go wrong when they built the Pierce and they had to Dynamite them up and start over again [Music] the Bahia Honda bridge would be built with longer spans between the concrete piers steel deck plates and trusses would be bolted to the piers for stability trains would run inside the trusses [Music] and when the Bahia Honda bridge was completed in January of 1912. it was joined to the already completed section through the Lower Keys to Key West [Music] Knight's key terminal closed on January 21 1912. the temporary Trestle at span number 36 was replaced with steel to complete the final section of the Key West extension Henry Flagler was ready to ride his rails to Key West [Music] the next morning January 22nd 1912 W.R Hawkins walked the length of the Knights key Trestle to photograph flagler's train crossing the seven mile bridge on its way to Key West Uncle Henry's train was the first passenger train to cross the bridge he wrote in his diary [Music] there was some uneasiness on account of the possibility of striking firemen doing some damage but none was done [Music] [Applause] at 10 43 a.m cheering crowds waved countless American flags as flagler's train rolled into the FEC terminal in Key West oh [Music] and Flagler was seen as he had been at every stop along the way as a hero lionized half the population there were more than ten thousand people that turned out to greet them [Music] this was an incredible time Key West was flooded with visitors foreign dignitaries the Navy there were circuses that came to town full two weeks there was nothing but celebrations there were parades there were fireworks there were wonderful formal parties and I love that we have oral histories from people who were alive for that moment and they talk about what it was like to get dressed up and go to this party to celebrate this incredible event It could only happen once and that excitement is what we're trying to get people to think about now a hundred years later the Florida East Coast Railway advertised the extension as the railroad that goes to Sea when those passengers were on the seven mile bridge if they looked out either side they couldn't see anything except water and in the middle of the Seven Mile Bridge you were so far out at Sea that you couldn't see land in either direction and so it was as if you were on a ship but you weren't on a ship you were on a train and these passengers who made that trip had a sense of accomplishment that very few other American railroad trips would have given anybody in American history [Music] the completion of the Key West extension was the crowning event in a lifetime of achievement and the Fulfillment of a dream for the people of Key West but parts of flagler's vision would never be realized according to the studies most of the ships going through the Panama Canal would head for the nearest deep water American port and that nearest deep water American Port would be Key West problem is the studies proved incorrect so most of the ships didn't head for the nearest deep water American Port I think that Henry Flagler always planned on the railroad carrying a lot of produce and it carried more passengers than it did produce it never was the financial success that Henry Flagler thought it would be after flagler's death William ran Keenan became FEC chairman during the company's thriving passenger service in the 1920s but the nation's economy collapsed during the Great Depression of the 1930s passenger and Freight traffic declined across America and the Florida East Coast Railway went bankrupt with one Quirk of fate the company that threw the Florida East Coast Railway into bankruptcy in 1931 during the Depression for non-payment of its fuel bills was Standard Oil during the Depression years the federal government-sponsored work programs to build roads and bridges in America hundreds of World War One veterans were sent to Laura matakumbi Ki for a highway construction project on Labor Day weekend September 2nd 1935 a hurricane warning was declared for the middle keys all of a sudden it the barometers began to drop and people knew something very bad was going to happen but no one had ever seen anything like this it's the only feasible thing to do was to send a train down and the FEC agreed that and the rescue train was sent in Homestead the engineer decided that he would turn the engine around and sort of back the engine down with the train behind him down to Islamorada station where it was agreed that he would pick everyone up but before he could do that the tidal wave ahead of this great storm washed ashore knocked the train off the track watched everybody essentially out to see most of them drowned the only people who survived at Ground Zero let's call it were the engineer a man named JJ haycraft and the con trains conductor and the firemen who huddled in the cab of the locomotive itself at 400 some tons it was too heavy for even this Great Wall of water to move the other cars were swept off the tracks along with everybody was trying to get in them foreign was by far the worst storm to ever hit these Shores and people weren't expecting it it just came very quickly and a woman had come from one of the other keys to Key West where their sister to see a doctor and it was Labor Day weekend 1935. so they rode the train down and they were in Key West and Key West really wasn't badly damaged by that storm but the place that these people came from in the middle of the keys was really devastated and there were 22 people in her family and they all died in that storm and she said the reason I'm alive today is because as a 12 year old I rode the last train this terrible storm was what brought about the end of the Key West extension with business having dropped precipitously the FEC in receivership because of the depression and no money at all to rebuild the Florida East Coast Railway filed for abandonment and in 1936 received permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission to abandon the railroad the State of Florida following the storm purchased the right-of-way for 640 thousand dollars for the purpose of building the Over the Sea Highway the federal government bought the Trumbo Island property for eight hundred thousand dollars So what had cost Mr Flagler 50 million dollars was sold for one million four hundred and forty thousand dollars construction Crews modified the viaducts and bridges for highways by the 1940s the former Railway was making way for the automobile and for the first time it was possible to drive across the entire island chain to America's southernmost point a new highway system emerged in the 1980s leaving the original Florida East Coast Railway Bridges as a monument to the achievements of Henry Flagler a man who believed that anything was possible in America [Music] they say history has a way of producing the individuals that it needs to develop but the fact remains that it's Flagler who created Florida as we know it today essentially the east coast of Florida anyway he brought populations down here and developed the country and brought this whole you know incredible lifestyle and brought tourism to Florida which in the end was of course one of the most important industries here the railroad from Key West to Miami was such an incredible thing for people who lived in Key West during the 1920s the beginning 1930s that you could step aboard a train and step off of the train and be in Miami and it could be done on Henry flagler's Railroad in such style we have oral histories that talk about what it was like to leave Key West and the sun was setting and the orange glow through the mangroves as they were serving drinks aboard this train ing there in that style was just so special and I wish we could do it today I mean I do have visitors to the museum that say well does Amtrak we say no of course not we don't have a real service to Key West and they've just driven down on the highway and they say wow it'd be really great if you did you know if you had a high-speed train and we say yep that would be great [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] this program was brought to you in part by no matter what goes on in the rest of the world the keys will always be unaffected the Florida Keys and Key West and by the following Flagler a coral gables-based commercial real estate company thank you [Music]