Free Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford Page B

building of a railroad across such territory, forever.
    Tuttle, undaunted, turned to the other great railroad builder in Florida, offering Henry Flagler half of her land if he would only bring his railroad southward to Miami along the east-coast route. When Tuttle began her campaign, Flagler was not interested.
    Though he had received a charter from the Florida legislature granting him rights to an extension of his lines to Fort Dallas, that claim presumably constituted an insurance policy for some distant future. Flagler saw no immediate reason to press his road beyond Palm Beach, not when the “city” making its blandishments was little more than a squatters’ outpost.
    With the grandest hotel in the world in operation and his tracks humming all the way from Jacksonville to West Palm Beach, Flagler, now in his early sixties, felt that he had indeed reached a logical resting place. And then fortune intervened.
    In the winter of 1894, one of the worst freezes in Florida history swept southward across the state, wiping out crops and citrus groves all the way to Palm Beach. The suffering he saw among farmers, growers, and laborers stunned Flagler. He sent James Ingraham, whom he had hired away from Plant, out on a private relief mission with $100,000 in cash, instructing him to disburse it all “and more, than have one man, woman, or child starve.”
    Flagler was also mindful of news sent to him by the indefatigable Julia Tuttle that Fort Dallas had not been touched by the freeze. Flowers still grew in profusion, and blossoms studded the citrus groves. Though legend has it that it was Tuttle who sent Flagler a bouquet of orange blossoms as dramatic proof of her settlement’s favorable climate, it is more likely Ingraham who came up with that notion, following a meeting with Tuttle and others eager to entice Flagler southward.
    In any case, Ingraham returned from Fort Dallas greatly impressed with the potential he saw in the land surrounding what is now Miami. And many historians insist that Flagler did have a spray of lemon, lime, and orange blossoms before him as he pondered his decision, though they say it was Ingraham and not Julia Tuttle whose idea it was.
    Orange blossoms or not, the decision did not take long. Inside of three days, Flagler had made plans for what was then an arduous trip: by rail to West Palm Beach, then by launch to Fort Lauderdale, then more than thirty miles by horse and carriage to Miami.
    On the journey, Flagler brought along his hotel designers, as well as his chief of railroad operations, Joseph Parrott. By the time Flagler and his men stepped down from the carriage into the balmy moonlight and gazed out over the placid waters of Biscayne Bay, it is likely that his mind was already made up. In short order, he struck the deal that Julia Tuttle had been urging upon him for years.
    Flagler would receive half of Tuttle’s homestead allotment and one hundred acres more, as well as another one hundred acres from the Brickell family, on the south side of the Miami River. In return, he would bring his railroad to Miami, construct another in the series of grand hotels, and develop a modern city on the site as well. Flagler confirmed the terms of the agreement in a letter dated April 22, 1895, and promised to have his railroad crossing the Miami River by the following February.
    He very nearly kept his word. Construction of the sixty-six-mile extension south from West Palm Beach was aided by a sizable contingent of convict labor leased to the Florida East Coast Railway at the rate of $2.50 a month. The company had to feed and house the men, but it was still an attractive deal when private labor might approach two dollars or more per day. The process took about ten months from start to finish, and the first passenger train pulled up to a makeshift station platform in Fort Dallas in late April of 1896.
    While Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel was still under construction and the rest of the town-to-be was