Last Train to Paradise (15 page)

He was still being buffeted by the winds, and at times the tree was bowed down very nearly to the waterline, but the man began to sense that he might live. Then he began to feel a terrible burning sensation at his hands. In moments the searing had moved to his face and lips, pressed tight against the trunk of the tree. His eyes had begun to burn and in moments were nearly swollen shut.

Even in his panic, he realized the terrible irony of what he had done. He had lashed himself to a manchineel tree, one of the most poisonous plants that grow in the tropics, a Lower Keys species of which the men had recently encountered. The indigenous Keys Indians had used the manchineel to poison the wells of the invading Spanish conquistadors, one of whom wrote home to Madrid, “He who sleeps under a manchineel, sleeps forever.”

Some workers had been hospitalized after merely brushing against the leaves of the tree; now, as the hurricane raged about him, this man was virtually wallowing in the thick white sap that oozed from its ruptured bark and broken limbs.

Still, what alternative did he have? Where once there had been land, nothing lay about him now but storm-tossed seas.

When the storm had passed, a rescue worker spotted the foreman’s swollen body slumped in the branches of the tree, and at first presumed him drowned. Once the man had been cut down, however, it was discovered he was still breathing. Astonished rescuers rushed him to a hospital on the mainland, where his recovery took several months. The bizarre incident constituted one of the grimmer of the human casualties resulting from the storm, which had only one death attributed to its passage.

Perhaps the most troubling discovery that Krome and Coe made in the storm’s aftermath was the fact that, in this instance, the sustained winds and waves had conspired to displace one of the principal support piers for the partially constructed Bahia Honda bridge, one that had taken an entire shipload of materials to build. It was an especially disconcerting sign, given the assumptions under which the engineering team had been operating. While wooden trestles and land-laid track might be washed away by storm and flood, such mishaps could occur on railroad right-of-way anywhere, and the destruction could be easily repaired, relatively speaking.

But the thought that one of these massive bridges spanning the channels might be toppled in a storm constituted the worst nightmare of everyone associated with the project. Visions of a fully loaded passenger train toppling into the sea preoccupied Krome and Coe, who went back to work resetting the pier, trying to reassure themselves that the event had been an anomaly.

Still, such uncertainties would linger on, leading to the development of regulations that might seem extreme today. Wind gauges were mounted at the approaches to all the bridges on the Extension, and were connected to electrical safety switches. At any time that the wind speed reached fifty miles per hour, the automatic switches were thrown, and train access to the bridges was denied.

Despite the fact that engineers had calculated that the spans could support speeds of seventy miles per hour and greater, a strict fifteen-mile-per-hour speed limit was imposed on all trains crossing the bridges, even under calm conditions. According to one writer, it meant that crossing the Long Key Viaduct took almost fifteen minutes. Traveling the whole of the Seven Mile Bridge took more than half an hour.

The various setbacks created by the third storm to strike the Extension seemed to take their toll on Flagler, who reeled as though he’d been struck physically by the winds and waves. Though his interest in seeing the project completed did not wane, he began to distance himself from day-to-day oversight of the project, delegating more and more authority to the railroad’s general manager, Joseph Parrott, as well as to Krome.

19

Deep Bay

One of the last of the gargantuan tasks involved in the completion of the route was the building of a bridge across the Bahia Honda Channel, connecting Bahia Honda, at MM 37, and the Spanish Harbor Keys. Though the distance was not nearly so great as some of the other spans that had been crossed—a little more than a mile, including approaches—the waters below were the deepest the engineers had encountered anywhere on the route, ranging from twenty feet to as many as thirty-five in some places. The conquistadors had not named the area Bahia Honda (or “Deep Bay”) by accident, after all.

Using the rule of thumb that experience had taught—one foot up for every foot of water below—Coe and Krome knew that this bridge had to be built on taller, more massive pilings than any before, in order to keep the rails above the reach of the worst hurricane-driven seas.

The fact that the pilings were so enormous was one reason why the two men had been so troubled by the discovery that the 1910 hurricane had managed to move one out of place. But, as if spurred on by the realization that Flagler was weakening physically, Coe and Krome went back to work with a vengeance.

Using a combination of the techniques that had been employed on the Long Key Viaduct and the Seven Mile Bridge, Coe deployed nine concrete arches, each eighty feet long, in the shallower waters and connected them with twenty-six longer spans laid atop tall concrete piers. While the top decks of all the other bridges in the vast network were unencumbered by any rails or superstructure, the Bahia Honda bridge was topped by a massive network of support girders more typical of railroad bridges elsewhere, a system in which the tracks are essentially hung from the trusses overhead. (The steel trusses also constituted the only work contracted out by the FEC over the course of the entire project, a decision mandated by economics and by the desire to finish while Flagler was still alive.)

If the result was not as graceful in appearance as the other bridges, this one was certainly the strongest—so much so, in fact, that the builders of the Overseas Highway would one day choose to lay their roadbed
on top of
the Bahia Honda railroad bridge rather than undertake the enormous task of widening it.

Completion of the Bahia Honda Bridge was not the end of Coe’s work by any means. Before the railroad could reach Key West, he would build others of his gracefully styled arched bridges, one at Spanish Harbor (seventy-seven spans long) and another farther along at Bow Channel (Cudjoe-Sugarloaf Keys, thirty-two arches), as well as oversee a number of lesser projects. In all, Coe would be responsible for fifteen major bridges on the Extension, as well as twelve miles of permanent trestlework. But the relocation of the displaced pier and the completion of the bridge at Bahia Honda meant that the last of the great challenges had been met and that what had once been the purest of fancies was about to materialize at last.

As early as February of 1911, Krome had been contacted by Joseph Parrott asking a blunt question: “Can you finish the road down to Key West so we can put Mr. Flagler there in his private car over his own rails out of Jacksonville on his next birthday, January 2nd?” While the state law authorizing the project stated that the Key West Extension was to be completed by May of 1912, Parrott’s request was based more upon sentiment than upon legal exigencies. Flagler’s next birthday would be his eighty-second, and those closest to him had come to feel that the only thing keeping the old man alive was his dream of seeing the project completed.

Krome, who had been a part of things from the beginning, was not unmoved, and agreed to come as close as he could. “I did some close figuring,” he wrote, “and finally replied that we could complete the road by January 22nd of that year should no storm overtake us, or no unforeseen delay set us back.”

Given the events of the previous six years, Krome’s exceptions were not insignificant, but he quickly set about to keep his word. Work schedules, already demanding, were cranked up yet again at both ends of the line. While Coe was overseeing construction of the bridges at Spanish Harbor and Bow Channel, other significant spans were under way at Niles Channel, almost a mile wide, as well as shallow-channel bridges connecting the others of the Lower Keys. Right-of-way in the Saddlebunch Keys, separating Cudjoe and Boca Chica, just a few miles out of Key West, consisted principally of marshland, requiring a return to the laborious dredge-and-fill method of building a roadbed employed just south of Homestead at the project’s outset. This time, six of the dredging machines were put to work to carve out a roadbed from the murky shallows.

Still, the question was no longer “Could it be done?” but “Can we make it to Key West on time?”

Perhaps the most significant of the remaining tasks had been given not to William Krome or Clarence Coe, but to Joseph Parrott, manager of all Flagler’s Florida interests and president of the FEC. Owing to the earlier difficulties with the Navy, there was still no terminal facility built to receive trains or handle the significant shipping traffic that was still using the temporary port facility on Knight’s Key.

Flagler dispatched Parrott to Key West, still the most bustling city in the entire state, to survey the situation and recommend how best to proceed. Though Parrott shared Flagler’s expeditious nature, this charge was to prove a difficult one.

In contrast to the other East Coast settlements, which had barely been known before Flagler brought his railroad through at the end of the nineteenth century, Key West had been a thriving port and commercial center since the 1820s. From the time of the first seventeenth-century explorers, the island had been a haven for pirates, who operated largely without interference until the U.S. Navy drove them out in 1822 and the city was chartered.

After the pirates, the next group of entrepreneurs to come along was the wreckers—or
gentleman
pirates, depending on one’s point of view. These wreckers built observation towers on land from which they kept a close eye on the outlying shallow reefs, especially during storms. When they spotted a ship that had run aground, they sped to the scene, often warring with their competitors on the way. Whoever made it to the site first was usually good enough to take survivors on board, but according to the law of the sea, the cargo belonged to the first to pull it from the wreck.

A favorite local story, and one retold by longtime Key West resident John Hersey in his
Key West Tales,
concerns the exploits of a Methodist preacher known as Squire Egan, who, during the week, plied the nearby reefs as a wrecker aboard his swift schooner
Godspeed.
On one particular Sunday the squire regaled his flock with a sermon based on the text of I Corinthians 9:4: “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?” Hardly had he begun than Squire Egan glanced out the window from his high pulpit to catch sight of a ship running aground on the nearby reef.

The squire did not miss a beat, however, and continued his sermon as he stepped from the pulpit and walked down the aisle between his rapt parishioners, leaning close and admonishing row after row to prepare themselves for the great race toward salvation.

When he had reached the great doors at the back of the church, he turned to give the congregation his benediction: “Wreck ashore,” he called. “Now we will run a race and see who receiveth the prize. Run that ye may obtain.” And with that he was out the door toward the
Godspeed,
all the men of his congregation in close pursuit.

The story may be apocryphal, but the practice was certainly not. Because the reefs were unreliably charted and often shifted position with the tides, the wrecking business was lucrative, so much so that it was not unknown for a captain to arrange a convenient wreck in advance. Once the cargo had been claimed and sold, the proceeds would be divided between the captain and the wreckers, with the owners left to fight it out with insurers, if they had any.

Matters had reached such disarray that a federal court was established in Key West in 1822 to try to bring order to the situation. Court or no, when storms abated and things got slow, some of these angels of mercy would go so far as to erect false lighthouse beacons that were sure to lure unsuspecting vessels onto the rocks. An unfortunate captain might complain, but by the time authorities made it out to check, all traces of any bogus light had vanished.

A number of those shipwreck survivors were introduced to the beauties of the atoll-like paradise in such a manner, and many of them stayed on to make a life there. The bounteous local waters supported thriving industries in fishing, shrimping, sponge diving, and even turtle raising.

As the word spread, others flocked southward. Even John James Audubon was a frequent visitor, drawn by the seemingly limitless flocks of sea and shore birds in the area. Lest anyone assume that the famed ornithologist was among the original tree-hugging conservationists, however, local historians are quick to point out that he should be more properly known as the Buffalo Bill of the bird population. Audubon and his traveling companions were reported to return from bird-hunting forays with hundreds and sometimes thousands of specimens in their bags.

It was a practice that Audubon freely defended—how else to study the creatures at close quarters, or to find that perfect specimen to serve as a model for his work? But he was also a thrill-seeking sportsman who considered it a bad day when he had downed fewer than a hundred birds.

“We have drawn seventeen different species since our arrival in Florida,” Audubon once wrote, “but the species are now exhausted and therefore I will push off.”

If Audubon was pushing off, however, thousands more were pushing in. By the 1880s, Key West had become the center of a thriving cigar-making business, much of it presided over by immigrants from nearby Cuba, fleeing the iron-fisted rule of Spanish colonialists. At the industry’s height, and before most such work moved northward to Tampa, Key West rollers were producing more than 62 million cigars a year, according to
Tobacco Leaf,
an industry journal. Others put the figure as high as 100 million.

By 1890, then, Key West was the most populous city in Florida, with its port ranked as the thirteenth busiest in the nation and its one by four miles of territory built and overbuilt already. By the time Joseph Parrott arrived, there was simply no more land to be had, certainly not enough for Flagler’s ambitious plans.

“There is no more dry land in Key West,” Parrott reported to his boss.

“Then make some,” Flagler replied.

And Parrott did.

He hired Howard Trumbo to head up the completion of the terminal project, explaining something of the urgency behind their efforts, and Trumbo went to work with the gusto befitting a member of Flagler’s team. He constructed a bulkhead extending in a broad arc above the northwest corner of the island and dredged thousands of cubic yards of marl from the adjoining flats to fill in a breakwater and foundation for railyards, terminal buildings, and docks. Part of the complex included a 1,700-foot-long pier, wide enough, at 134 feet, to allow trains to pull directly alongside a docked ocean liner.

Once again the Navy tried to block the project, complaining that Trumbo was removing fill from submerged lands under their control, fill that might be needed for defense purposes someday. Parrott’s response was couched in classic Flaglerese: If the time ever came when the Navy needed its mud, Parrott said, they had his word it would be returned from whence it came.

Such a promise probably did not satisfy Navy officials, but with Flagler’s railroad about to reach the island, excitement among the local citizenry and officials was at a fever pitch. Any wrangling over mud and dredging issues was moot. Trumbo’s work would go forward, and by January of 1912, the terminal facility at Man-of-War Harbor was in readiness: arriving passengers would be able to walk a few steps across a platform and board a ship bound for Havana. As many as five hundred freight cars could be stored in the yards, ready to load exotic cargo brought up from the Caribbean and Central and South America, then hauled directly north to, as Jefferson Browne had once predicted, “provide the country with pineapples, tropical fruit and vegetables all winter.”

By this time even Flagler’s former enemies had been swept up in the mounting enthusiasm. Representative Frank Clark, a Florida congressman who had staunchly opposed Flagler at the time he sought to have Florida’s divorce laws changed, had come to an about-face. In a speech before the Florida House, Clark lauded Flagler’s contributions to the state as having been “the direct cause of providing happy and contented homes for full 50,000 people,” and went on to introduce a resolution celebrating the project’s impending completion and applauding Flagler’s vision and endurance.

Local editorial writers were jubilant, predicting a limitless future of prosperity for the island paradise. “The Old Key West—one of the most unique of the world’s historic little cities—is shaking off its lethargy,” said the
Florida Times Union,
“. . . the spirit of progress and development will be greater than ever.” A new year and a new era were about to dawn.