Railroad Barons - made Florida?

Plant and Flagler took their money and 'created' Florida.
Or so it seems, after reading about the two magnates.
Both made their money from good realty/land investments, corn, oil, etc.
Then turned around and built monumental houses, hotels, railroads...
Both men were married, Plant twice, Flagler thrice.

Henry Bradley Plant concentrated on the West/Golf regions and built several luxury hotels, the most famous one in Tampa,
NOW housing the University of Tampa and the Henry B Plant Museum.

He basically built Port Tampaa few miles away from shallow Tampa Bay, to enable deep ocean craft to moor with access to railroads for easier loading and unloading.

St.Pete Forum(*)

Hillsborough River(*)

Tampa is also known as 'cigar city' and is the home of the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL team which plays at St. Pete's Forum

Mascot BOLT of  the
Lightening(*)

'Green Men' Fans at TB Lightening Game (*)



Henry Morrison Flagler pictured here ca 1882,

Alligator (*)

concentrated on the East/Atlantic region.
He wanted to ride his own rail car to Key West and eventually did so.
His engineers used all available technical advances, but relied heavily on man power to dig, shift, built embankments where none existed on these flat little pieces of sandbanks rising a scant foot or so above the ocean, and lay the railroad.

Between him and Plant, the made Florida the tourist destination of the times, and it still is, hurricane season notwithstanding!

Mangrove swamp

Spending most of his money to build and rebuild an railroad over water,
 and through almost impenetrable mangrove swamps, besieged by mosquitoes, yellow fever outbreaks,
and several hurricanes which interrupted the progress.


Hurricane tracks over Florida

 And shortly before his death at 84, he did it!


New AND old  (see left) bridge spans

 . 

After the Labor Day 1935 hurricane, the worst recorded to strike the USA, most of Flagler's railroad to Key West was destroyed with heavy loss of workers' live and lives of inhabitants of the Keys.



US 1

So the RR sold the land for a pittance to the State of Florida which used many parts of it to build US 1.


Breakers, a historic hotel



Flagler's hotels:
 "The Breakers" and others still are iconic destinations for the luxury trade in Miami, San Augustine and elsewhere!



Royal Poinciana Hotel in West Palm Beach ca 1920 now extinct.

There is a monument to him on  Flagler Island in Biscayne Bay,

and the  Flagler College  in St. Augustine. 
It's the former"Ponce De Leon" Flagler hotel.

Flagler County, Flagler beach in Florida and Flagler, Colorado  (by request of his daughter who liked the area) are also named for him.
His former home, Whitehall, Palm Beach,
is open to the public as the Henry Morrison Flagler Musem with his private railcar No. 91 preserved inside a Beaux Arts pavilion built to look like a 19th Century railway palace.

These two men had visions, followed through tenaciously, spending their own funds to achieve them and -
in effect - gained  immortality through the results.
Those were the days of no taxes, little government regulations and emerging technical advances.
But above all, these were times when immense personal drive overcame adversities seldom encountered before.
 That vaunted American Spirit alive and well:
We Can and Will Do It!

(*) Photos by artandhockey.