About book Last Train To Paradise: Henry Flagler And The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of The Railroad That Crossed An Ocean (2003)
Frankly, I have no idea how I ran across this very interesting book. Henry Flagler, one of the last great industrialists and oil barons, built a railroad across the Florida Keys, a feat that had been considered impossible, in order to capitalize on the proximity of Cuba to the nascent Panama Canal. He had already virtually built the state of Florida by buying and developing land all along the east coast, then linking his hotel properties via rail. His Key West Railroad, an extension of the Florida East Coast Railroad, would connect Miami to Key West, about 153 miles, much of it over open water. A massive hurricane in 1935 undid it all. The Weather Bureau did not begin naming hurricanes until 1953, so in 1935 as Hemingway viewed the sketchy forecasts and storm warnings with alarm, he had no way of referring to the specific storm that was about to destroy Key West. Unbeknownst to him, just to the north, the barometer had fallen to the lowest ever recorded. The islands of the Florida Keys are not very high above the water, making them especially vulnerable to storms and waves. Despite this knowledge, Henry Flagler had built the dream extension of his railroad in a magnificent feat of engineering. Nature was about to suggest that he shouldn't have bothered. Considering that Flagler in 1898 was sixtyeight years old and could have easily retired to a luxurious existence, it is even more remarkable that he would have risked his fortune on such a risky venture. The Spanish-American War, which cost Spain Cuba, provided the added incentive he needed. (It is interesting to speculate what might have happened had William Jennings Bryan been elected president instead of McKinley, who was a great friend to business. Bryan, I suspect, would not have been drawn into the skullduggery behind the sinking of the Maine.) Having been thwarted in his desire to build a deep-water port in Miami, Flagler deemed Key West a logical alternative. The engineering difficulties were staggering. Special dredges on boats were designed to carve out a way for themselves as they used the material pulled from the swamps and marshes to create the roadbed. Mosquitoes swarmed all during the day, and portending the disaster that was to befall the railroad in 1935, a hurricane killed many workers in 1906 as the special dormitory barges were smashed. Several long bridges had to span many miles of ocean, and the seven-mile viaduct, considered a beautiful structure, became the symbol of the Florida East Coast Railroad. The Keys, originally an unbroken stretch of land that connected present-day Florida to Mexico are simply the vestigial remains of that land bridge subject to eons of erosion and storms — unless, of course, you are a young earth advocate in which case it was five minutes. That is a problem for builders because storms continue to push walls of water twenty to thirty feet high in front of them. These storm surges would course through the natural passageways that had been cut between the remaining land forms. Any blockage of these waterways would cause tremendous problems. The railroad builders, who had filled in shorter distances between land areas, were creating unnatural dikes. They were swept away in the first hurricane to batter the railroad in 1909. Flagler and his engineers revised their plans and built more bridges that permitted water to flow underneath rather than impede its flow. They also discovered that the natural limestone marl made a much better substrate than imported rock and gravel, which was easily washed away. The line was completed slightly ahead of schedule despite several setbacks and shortly before Flagler's death. It had cost him most of his fortune to build, but never made money. Instead of encouraging growth on the Keys, there is evidence it might have done the opposite. Many residents chose to leave the islands and migrated to Miami on the railroad. Traffic from Cuba never amounted to much, and by 1930 the Census Bureau reported that Key West had actually lost more than seven thousand residents. The worst hurricane in United States history, on Labor Day 1935, washed everything away. Winds in excess of 200 mph were measured. Given that the winds in only 3 percent of tornadoes exceed 206 mph you can get an idea of the devastation caused on a series of islands that were barely above sea level. ("A minimal 75-mile-per-hour storm has the capability of propelling a shard of two-by-four lumber through a four-inch concrete block wall." Bear in mind that when wind speed doubles, its force quadruples. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 produced only 155 mph winds.) Weather forecasting was still in its infancy, but the railroad, given its earlier experience with hurricanes, had implemented several measures to help provide some warning. Nevertheless, loss of life was extensive and an emergency relief train sent to take people off the keys was blown away. The well-built bridges survived, indeed they were partly used to build the highway that now links the Keys to the mainland, but the railroad was bankrupt by then, and the rights-of-way were sold to the state for not even one-twentieth of the $30 million Flagler had spent on building the Keys Extension. His chain of world-class resorts still remains as a monument to the man who virtually created Florida.
Henry Flagler was the co-founder of Standard Oil, along with John D. Rockefeller. Why have you not heard of him? (Or at least, why had I not heard of him?) Partly because his descendants don't seem to have held onto his wealth, but mostly because he ended up spending most of his money developing Florida. This book tells the story of the building of a railroad from the Florida mainland out to Key West, a route that can today be driven by car as the Overseas Highway, much of which was laid on the railroad infrastructure built from about 1895 to 1912.The project was sort of a quixotic fool's errand and sort of an amazing vision. It was plagued by hurricanes and unbelievable engineering challenges (all done with steam power and sheer human muscle), and the book conveys it well without getting too deep into the engineering. For that it gets 3 stars; it is a fairly quick read on an interesting topic.However, the book also has its flaws. It introduces the characters involved in the project, but does nothing to really bring them to life. The most gripping parts of the book don't have much to do with the railroad at all, but with the 1935 hurricane that destroyed it. The writing and grammar are too simplistic for my taste. And it really, really glosses over the average workingman. The project was plagued with allegations of worker mistreatment. It's possible the allegations were invented whole cloth, but it seems more likely they contained at least a glimmer of truth; Standiford does not really entertain that possibility. On a few occasions he mentions that a few workmen died (such as in hurricanes), but these are also extremely glossed over and no actual facts or figures are provided. I assumed that Flagler's second wife, who was put away in an insane asylum and subsequently divorced when Flagler paid off the Florida legislature to allow divorce on grounds of insanity, received the same glossed over treatment. Putting inconvenient women away was not an uncommon practice at the time. However, later in the book Standiford provides details indicating that she really was crazy and suffering from delusions and hallucinations.
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I'd never heard of Henry Flagler who was a cofounder of Standard Oil along with Rockefeller. But, Flagler spent a lot of his money developing Florida - from cities and hotels to railroads. One of his greatest feats was building a railroad that connected the tip of Florida to Key West... 156 miles or track with much of it being over water! Most people thought it couldn't be done. And, the weather sure didn't cooperate!Although I felt the book lagged a bit in the middle, over all this is an exciting book! Multiple hurricanes hit hit the Over-Sea Railroad both while it was being built and 30 years later. These stories are incredible and incredibly sad.This book wasn't very long and I read the Kindle edition in probably about four hours. If you enjoy incredible true tales and learning more about history, I think you'll enjoy this book!
—Dana
"Last Train to Paradise" is popular history at its best. This is the story of an era that is no more--a time when one man with unlimited resources, and more importantly, unlimited vision could accomplish something wondrous. Henry M. Flager, who co-founded Standard Oil with John Rockefeller, left his active role in the company 15 years after its birth to pursue his new passion: building the modern state of Florida. At the heart of this book is Flager's drive to see the Key West Railroad completed before his death.The idea of running train tracks all the way to Key West had been around for a while, but had been dismissed by most people as wildly impractical. Flager was determined to see it through, buoyed during the many challenges the project faced by his unshakable belief that the completion of the rail line, coupled with the opening of the Panama Canal, would transform Key West into a major port. (That part of Flager's vision was to remain unfulfilled.) The engineering challenges proved to be huge, and the toll of lost lives was great. But Flager persevered. The line was completed in 1912, slightly more than a year before Flager's death at eighty-three. It stood for twenty-three years, until its swift obliteration in the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. Author Les Standiford brings the creation and destruction of this rail line to life in vivid, novelistic detail. At the end, the reader is left pondering a question: Was the expenditure of lives and treasure worth it? If we could put that query to Henry Flager today, I believe the answer would be yes.
—Bill Hall
I wanted this book to be more but I blame my disappointment not on the book itself but on the fact that I read it directly after finishing Grunwald's fine tome "The Swamp," which blew my little mind. In "Last Train," Standiford tells the story of how Henry Flagler, the financial brains behind Rockefeller's Standard Oil, sunk much of his fortune into developing Florida and building a railroad down the east coast and across the ocean from the mainland to Key West. But having just read "The Swamp," I am in a mindset that southern Florida should never have been developed to the level that it has been; it just cannot sustain the population that now lives there. This is not Flagler's fault; he did not build all the cookie-cutter Miami burbs in the middle of the swamp and turn southern Florida into a hellscape of concrete and strip malls. But his railroad created Miami; and Palm Springs; and the whole east coast of southern Florida. It brought people to paradise. And they stayed. Too many of them stayed. And they built what they built. And they're running out of water and nature is disappearing. And what now?But all of those concerns aside, the book itself is inherently readable. A bit heavy on the Flagler-as-hero; Standiford finds few character flaws in the man, if any. I wanted a little more about the people; a little more in-depth biography of the engineers who sacrificed, and even died, to see Flagler's dream achieved. A little more about the societies Flagler's project created. I wanted an anthropological study of the culture Flagler created. Standiford gives a play-by-play of how the rails were built.There is no doubt that the railroad was a engineering feat of monumental magnitude. And having seen the bridges that still stand and imagining a day when you could get on the Havana Express in New York, arrive in Key West and immediately board a steamship for a short jaunt to Cuba gave me the requisite chills.I picked this up because I was curious about the era but there's very little here to assuage my curiosity; very little tangible atmosphere. A disappointment, moreso, given how Standiford starts the book, with a description of driving US Highway 1. His sense of place and how he communicates it to the reader is exquisite in this section. "It's an osprey's-eye view here at MM 84, out over the patchwork-colored seas. Splashes of cobalt, turquoise, amber, beige, and gray alternate, then fall away to deeper blue and steel, and off toward a pale horizon where sky and water meet at a juncture that's almost seamless on the brightest days ... the urge begins to creep in the back of the traveler's mind at about this moment: ... desert island, private island, island paradise. Buy myself one of these little dots, get a boat, and build a dock, kiss the world good-bye ..."But Standiford gives us none of that atmosphere in his history. It's like there are three separate books stories here; the 1935 hurricane and Ernest Hemingway, driving Highway 1, and Henry Flagler. And Standiford gives the Flagler story the least of his cultural, narrative and descriptive energy. It's almost just a chronology. I wanted more."In a sense, the highway is what remains of one of the last great gasps of the era of Manifest Destiny and an undertaking that marked the true closing of the American Frontier. The building of "the railroad across the ocean" was a colossal piece of work, born of the same impulse that made individuals believe that pyramids could be raised, cathedrals erected, and continents tamed."
—Krista
