Henry Morrison Flagler

Henry Morrison Flagler. , Henry Flagler grew up in New York and Ohio, and left home at the age of 14 to make his fortune. In 1867 with a loan of $100.000, he entered the oil refinery partnership with John D. Rockefeller that became the Standard Oil Company. By 1884 it was the largest and richest company in the country. In the winter of 1876-1877, Flagler made his first visit to Florida. On arrival at St. Augustine, then Florida’s leading winter resort, Flagler found the state primitive. In 1884 he began his Florida adventure by buying the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railroad which he renamed the Florida East Coast Railroad. Building hotels and extending the railroad south the Flagler system grew to include the Florida East Coast Railroad, the Florida East Coast Hotel Company, the Model Land Company and the P&O Steamship Company. In 1896, the railroad reached Miami. The Spanish American War of 1898 freed Cuba and increased trade. The building of the Panama Canal caused Flagler to look to Key West which, had the harbor he needed to intercept the goods passing through the canal and ship them by rail. Key West, in the 1890’s was the largest city in the state. Flagler’s order was, “ go ahead, go to Key West.” The railroad to Key West was probably the one event that brought the greatest change to the island city. Overcoming the problems of building a railroad more than a hundred miles out to sea and suffering the damage inflicted on the work by three major hurricanes the railroad was completed on January 22, 1912. Henry Flagler, then 82 years old, rode the first train to Key West. The Oversea Railway was one of the greatest engineering and construction projects in the modern world. Today the original railroad right of way is used as US1.