A Journey into Florida Railroad History by
"A Journey into Florida Railroad History is a comprehensive, authoritative work on the development of rail transport. While the system enjoyed several decades of growth and prosperity, a long and slow decline surfaced with the combined forces of the Great Depression, the popularization of the automobile, the rise of trucking, and air travel. Despite efforts to rescue the failing railroads, much of the nearly 6,000-mile network has largely vanished; some rails have now become hiking trails or green spaces."
The Spanish-American War by
This all-in-one resource on America's "Splendid Little War" contains essays, biographies, and primary documents.
Last Train to Paradise by
The extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad; one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores. In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller and the true mastermind behind Standard Oil, concocted the dream of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open ocean; an engineering challenge beyond even that of the Panama Canal. But build it they did, and the railroad stood as a magnificent achievement for twenty-two years. Once dismissed as; Flagler's Folly, it was heralded as the Eighth Wonder of the World; until a will even greater than Flagler's rose up in opposition. In 1935, a hurricane of exceptional force, which would be dubbed the Storm of the Century, swept through the tiny islands, killing some 700 residents and workmen and washing away all but one sixty-foot section of track, on which a 320,000-pound railroad engine stood and gripped its rails as if the gravity of Jupiter were pressing upon it; Standiford brings the full force and fury of this storm to terrifying life. In spinning his saga of the railroad's construction, Standiford immerses us in the treacherous world of the thousands of workers who beat their way through infested swamps, lived in fragile tent cities on barges anchored in the midst of daunting stretches of ocean, and suffered from a remarkable succession of three ominous hurricanes that killed many and washed away vast stretches of track. Steadfast through every setback, Flagler inspired a loyalty in his workers so strong that even after a hurricane dislodged one of the railroad's massive pilings, casting doubt over the viability of the entire project, his engineers refused to be beaten. The question was no longer; Could it be done? but; Can we make it to Key West on time? to allow Flagler to ride the rails of his dream. Last Train to Paradise celebrates this crowning achievement of Gilded Age ambition, a sweeping tale of the powerful forces of human ingenuity colliding with the even greater forces of nature's wrath.
"Citrus arrived with European explorers in the 16th century and quickly took root in Florida, but it was not until the 1830s that Florida developed a monopoly over cultivating citrus fruits. A devastating freeze in 1835 destroyed citrus growing efforts in the Carolinas and Georgia, beginning a permanent southward migration of the industry into Florida."
Florida Memory Project
Roman Baldoriotyde de Castro, Antonio Maceo, Theodore Roosevelt, Clara Barton and "The Varese".
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Nearly a century ago, in the 1910s, brothers John and Charles Ringling decided to invest in the future of Sarasota.
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Flagler by
Henry M. Flagler (1830-1913), the ambitious Gilded Age tycoon who designed and built much of Florida's fashionable east coast, rode to success on the rails. As John D. Rockefeller's closest adviser in the 1870s, Flagler helped assemble the Standard Oil empire. In this thoroughly researched biography, Akin shows that Flagler understood early in his career that cheap freight rates determined industrial profits. Portraying Flagler as an aggressive entrepreneur, Akin documents his shrewd negotiations to obtain reduced rates, rebates, and drawbacks from the railroads, thus assuring Standard Oil's national domination over oil transportation costs; Flagler drove himself as hard as he drove a bargain, obsessed with the desire to create a monument to himself that he called "my domain." His legacy was no less than modern Florida. In 1885, at the age of fifty-five, he turned his attention away from Standard Oil and began construction of the Ponce de León luxury hotel in St. Augustine, the city where he had honeymooned with his second wife. Realizing he could never fill its rooms unless better transportation with the North was available, he embarked on the second railroad venture of his lifetime, creation of the Florida East Coast Railway. Flagler's resort empire eventually included The Breakers in Palm Beach and the Royal Palm in Miami; his Atlantic coast railroad extended all the way to Key West, an engineering achievement that was called the "eighth wonder of the world." By the beginning of the twentieth century, Flagler dominated not just the resort and railroad industries in Florida but steamship and agricultural operations, too. Florida politicians gave his projects preferential treatment, even changing the state's divorce law so he could marry for a third time.
Beechers, Stowes and Yankee Strangers by
"Much has been written about carpetbaggers, the rise of Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan. Here's another side of the period: the reformers, educators, ministers and entrepeneurs who came to Florida and laid a foundation upon which a modern state was built. . . . --Beechers, Stowes, and Yankee Strangers-- is an interesting story about remarkable people during a period of change. "For those who think Henry Flagler's railroad was the only thing that brought settlers to Florida, Before Flagler Drove his first spike in Florida, a group of social reformers from the North had a major impact on the state in the Reconstruction period of the late 19th century. . . . The most well-know 'Stranger' was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of --Uncle Tom's Cabin. Abraham Lincoln is said to have introduced her once as the 'lady who started the Civil War.' Reading this book, one might also call her the 'lady who started Florida tourism.'" --Daytona Beach News-Journal "A very readable history of Florida covering the period just prior to the Civil War and until the start of the 20th century. .
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