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

In February of 1904 the United States Senate voted 66–14 to ratify the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, putting to an end the nearly thirty-five years of controversy and uncertainty surrounding the issue of where to build a canal joining East with West.

While sales and leasing of these lands abutting his right-of-way were a windfall, Flagler was always on the lookout for properties that might be developed as resorts, thereby creating an incentive for passengers to ride each new leg of his line. He took to riding his own railroad incognito, the better to scout out likely targets for acquisition wit

Tuttle, undaunted, turned to the other great railroad builder in Florida, offering Henry Flagler half of her land if he would only bring his railroad southward to Miami along the east-coast route. When Tuttle began her campaign, Flagler was not interested.

There is no change of cars between Key West and the Pennsylvania Station in the very heart of New York City.”

As for predictions that Key West, “America’s Gibraltar,” would become a burgeoning center of commerce, Trumbo’s difficulties in finding space for so much as one steamship dock should have been a tip-off. Even before the railroad came miraculously to town, Key West was decidedly overbuilt, and the infrastructure for expansion simply did not exist. T

Flagler was crushed, but he had learned something from the building of the Ponce de Leon. In a small way, he had become a creator instead of an accumulator, and had found a more substantive sort of satisfaction in such accomplishments. As a result, he undertook to build a church in memory of his daughter and her stillborn child, a visible and posit

Instead of encouraging growth, there is evidence that the railroad’s arrival actually encouraged some Key West residents to leave the far-flung island. At last, significant numbers of immigrants who had come from Cuba and other Caribbean islands in search of a better life had ready access to a larger world—a Sunday round-trip ticket to Miami went f

would go so far as to erect false lighthouse beacons that were sure to lure unsuspecting vessels onto the rocks. An unfortunate captain might complain, but by the time authorities made it out to check, all traces of any bogus light had vanished.

In the treaty that concluded the war, Spain agreed to give up its authority over Cuba, virtually assuring that United States interests would prevail there, a point not lost on future historians who would speculate that the scuttling of the Maine was an inside job, the result of a conspiracy between the U.S. government and nefarious business interes