Last Resort

Henry Morrison Flagler, son of an impoverished Presbyterian minister in upstate New York, organized Standard Oil Co., left John D. Rockefeller to run it and retired to Florida in 1883 with ever mounting millions in profits. These he proceeded to invest in building Florida hotels (one with 13 miles of corridors), towns, railroads. One of his dreams was to connect Key West with the mainland. He declared he would die in peace once his railroad stretched over the 140 miles of coral reefs to the most southerly U. S. city. Seven years, some 200 lives and $28,000,000 was the cost of building concrete viaducts across the keys, and in 1912, the year before Flagler died, his trains rumbled into Key West. In 1931 however, the road went into receivership, in 1935 the great Labor Day hurricane blew it to pieces. Last week Founder Flagler's dream was revived, as the roadbed of his railroad was reopened as a motor highway.

As a $3,600,000 PWA project work began 15 months ago converting the old single-track railroad line and its 80-mile string of ocean bridges into a 20-foot, two-lane highway between Lower Matecumbe Key and Key West. Widened and decked over with reinforced concrete slabs, the new road and its 30-year-old foundations are warranted hurricane proof by Government engineers. FERA and the Red Cross have built concrete storm shelters along the route, each supplied with emergency fresh water. The steel railroad rails have been economically reset as guard rails. Most of the workers were Key Westers from relief ranks, among them hundreds of former cigar makers. The new bridged section completes the170-mile Overseas Highway from Miami to Key West, makes Key West the terminus of U. S. 1. most heavily-traveled road in the nation. The other terminus is at Calais, Me., approximately 2,100 miles away on the Canadian border.

Key West, called Cayo Huesco--Bone Reef--by buccaneers, was once a clearing house for pirate loot. Before its shores were marked with lighthouses Key West inhabitants did a good trade in wrecked vessels. Then came Cubans, fleeing their revolution in 1869. who set up Key West's cigarmaking industry. Spongers and shrimp fishers followed. For a time the U. S. planned to make it an American Gibraltar. In 1896. Key West's prosperity was at its peak, its population at an all-time high of 25,000 and it was the biggest, richest city in Florida. But despite Henry Flagler's railroad population began to decline, is now down to 13,000. Rehabilitated in 1934 by the U. S. Government, the town was set back again by the 1935 storm, but in the three years since has blossomed as a resort, wintering 3,000 northerners, visited by 35,000 tourists. Deeply hurt were Key Westers last week to find that some visitors, who came in the first day's 1,100 automobiles, thought it necessary to bring cans filled with their own drinking water.

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