It is safe to say that Henry Flagler was tickled when his private railcar, the Flagler Special, rolled into the Key West station at 10:43 a.m. on Jan. 22, 1912. Some 10,000 people gathered at the depot area to celebrate the arrival of the 82-year-old industrialist.
While Key West was the terminus of the Florida East Coast Railway, it was not the end of the line for many of the rail cars. Their destination was Havana.
Before Flagler hatched the plan to bring his train to Key West, the island was too small to accommodate his vision, so engineers created an additional 174 acres of Key West real estate through a dredge-and-fill project, resulting in what is known today as Trumbo Point. The train tracks came to an end at Trumbo Point. The terminus of the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway (F.E.C.) was doing more than acting as a hub for travel between Key West and points north (or east and then north).
Trumbo Point also handled 360-foot-long ferries capable of transporting people, cargo and railroad cars between Key West and Havana. Three ferries made the trek back and forth, the Henry M. Flagler, Estrada Palma and Joseph. R. Parrott. Parrott was the president of the Florida East Coast Railway. Each had four sets of parallel train tracks that could carry up to 26 box and refrigerator railroad cars.
The ferry system became operational in 1915. Chugging along at an average speed of 12 miles per hour, the trip took approximately eight hours. Goods shipped in the cars moving back and forth between the ports included sugar, molasses and tropical fruits, bananas and pineapples, dairy products, fuel, lumber and sugar-processing machinery.
The beginning of the end for the Key West Extension came when competition for rail service developed with the 1929 opening of the New Orleans-based Seatrain. It was not the last piece of bad news. On Oct. 24, 1929, the Wall Street Stock Exchange crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. In 1930, the F.E.C. implemented systemwide cutbacks. In September 1931, the F.E.C. defaulted on its mortgage bond and the company was placed into receivership – a third party appointed to take possession of or manage the operations and finances of a company.
The final nail in the Key West Extension’s coffin arrived on Labor Day. It was not the end Henry Flagler envisioned when he paid to have train tracks pounded into the island chain that led to Key West. Flagler never saw it coming. He died in his Palm Beach home, Whitehall, on May 20, 1913. He was 83 years old.
Labor Day is summer’s last hurrah. The holiday fills hotel rooms and restaurant seats, and roads and waterways become jammed with visitors and residents out for a good time.
For some locals, Labor Day weekend, like all holiday weekends, represents a good time to hit the supermarket early, pack up food and drink and hunker down until Tuesday, when island life returns to a more island pace.
In 1935, Labor Day brought something horrific to the Florida Keys. While hurricanes have been pounding the islands since the island chain first rose from beneath the surface of the ocean, the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane stands out, still. The eye of the hurricane crossed over Lower Matecumbe and Long Keys on Sept. 2. To this day, it remains the most powerful hurricane ever to make a North American landfall.
The storm raged over the Upper Keys with sustained winds in excess of 180 mph and a tidal surge of 18 to 20 feet. No one knows the exact number of deaths attributed to the storm, but it is thought to be in the neighborhood of 500. The Category 5 hurricane altered the history of the Florida Keys. The storm destroyed several bridges in the Islamorada area and 40 miles of railroad tracks.
The train never chugged up and down the Florida Keys again. After the hurricane, the railroad ferries moved to the mainland and operated between Havana and Port Everglades. After World War II, the ferries moved up the coast a little bit more to the Port of Palm Beach. Ferry service to Havana ended in 1969.
Already facing bankruptcy, the Key West Extension of the railway was abandoned south of Florida City, and the right-of-way was sold to the state of Florida for $640,000. When driving along the modern Overseas Highway, the path, with a few exceptions, follows the original right-of-way of Henry Flagler’s railroad.
The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane is an excellent example that all storms are not the same. It was a compact storm with hurricane forces being limited to the Upper and portions of the Middle Keys. Key West and the Lower Keys were relatively unaffected. On that Monday, as the storm ravaged Tavernier, Islamorada, Long Key and Grassy Key, Key West reported 82 degrees at 1:30 p.m., with winds from the north at 18 mph. According to reports from the Weather Bureau, “Hurricane warnings ordered for Key West. It will be attended by winds of hurricane force in the Florida Straits and Florida Keys south of Key Largo this afternoon and tonight.”
At 4:30 p.m., Key West reported 83 degrees. Winds were blowing out of the north at 21 mph. “Hurricane warnings for the town of Everglades and Miami to West Palm Beach. Tropical Storm now apparently moving north westward toward Florida Keys and accompanied by hurricane winds over small area. High tides probable. Please notify people in exposed places to take adequate precautions.”
At 10 p.m., Key West reported 81 degrees. Winds were out of the northwest at 34 mph. “Hurricane warnings north of Everglades to Punta Gorda. Tropical disturbance of full hurricane intensity but rather small diameter central 8 p.m. near Matecumbe Key moving northwestward accompanied by shifting gales and hurricane winds near center.”
In the Florida Keys, people still wonder about what would be different if the train was still chugging up and down the island chain. Labor Day will be a time for celebration, and there will be talk of that tragic day in 1935.
