The Overseas Railroad, the Overseas Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway, was an engineering masterpiece built through the Florida Keys after Henry M. Flagler in 1904 urged his engineers to reach Key West. Its construction was a gigantic human undertaking shaped by workers and local citizens, hurricanes, insects, blistering heat, and shortages of food, water, and building materials, at a cost of about $212,000 a mile. Laborers from northern cities often proved difficult to control and many left, and although Flagler's company was charged with peonage, it was judged not guilty at trial; workers from southern Europe and the Cayman and Bahama Islands proved more dependable in the climate. Work camps took on the air of frontier settlements on payday, with boats arriving from Key West carrying liquor, women, patent medicine salesmen, and missionaries. Wind and waves forced the invention of new construction methods, and three hurricanes struck the Keys during construction; in 1906 Quarterboat No.4 washed out to sea and 100 workers died, while storm-driven waves washed out railway beds and destroyed equipment. Afterward, travel schedules were canceled and trains were automatically stopped when winds reached 50 mph because a moving train might be swept from the track, and the 1935 Hurricane later destroyed 41 miles of the FEC Railroad across the keys. The railway transformed life on Matecumbe by bringing a train station, a new town, northern visitors, a sport fishing industry, railroad work camps, and thousands of laborers. By 1912, two passenger trains and one freight train traveled each way through Islamorada daily except Sunday, and a water train hauled cypress tanks filled with Everglades water. William J. Krome, chief engineer of railroad construction, built a house on Matecumbe, named the train stop Islamorada in 1907, and had the first streets platted.