Henry Morrison Flagler

Henry Flagler grew up in New York and Ohio and left home at age 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, and by 1884 it was the largest and richest company in the country. During the winter of 1876-1877, he made his first visit to Florida and, on arriving at St. Augustine, then the state's leading winter resort, found the state primitive. In 1884 he began his Florida venture by buying the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railroad and renaming it the Florida East Coast Railroad. As he built hotels and extended 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, and the building of the Panama Canal caused him to look to Key West, which had the harbor he needed to intercept goods passing through the canal and ship them by rail. Key West was the state's largest city in the 1890's, and his order was to go ahead to Key West. The railroad to Key West probably brought the greatest change to the island city. After overcoming the problems of building a railroad more than a hundred miles out to sea and the damage inflicted by three major hurricanes, the railroad was completed on January 22, 1912. Then 82 years old, Henry Flagler rode the first train to Key West. The Oversea Railway was one of the greatest engineering and construction projects in the modern world, and today the original railroad right of way is used as US1.

Key West, Florida · United States