Miami in 1904: Nothing that savored of prosperity or future greatness except ...

Miami Bayfront Park 1958 (before the find in the 2000s)
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

In June 1897, the Daily Metropolis extolled the virtues of Miami (see prior post at http://bit.ly/1bU4bUp), a tiny settlement incorporated in 1896. The five-star Royal Palm Hotel was listed as one of the town’s assets and, indeed, it was.

Seven years later the same newspaper reported that Miami and its high-profile hotel, which was known to assign an attendant to each guest, made front page news of the Daily National Hotel Reporter. Its editor (unnamed) had made an East Coast trip during the winter season of 1904 to report on its “magnificent hotels;” Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel was one of them.  

The editor wrote:

 The town of Miami is a revelation. Before the advent of the East Coast Railway, eight years ago, Miami was little more than a wilderness … few inhabitants, no industries and nothing that savored of prosperity or future greatness.

Miami is today one of the prettiest towns in Florida. It has three banks, numerous fine shops, factories, two daily newspapers and a tourist hotel. That hotel, the Royal Palm … is a hotel that appeals to every one who enjoys artistic excellence, home comforts and luxurious appointments. The hotel is under the management of Henry W. Merrill, first manager of the Poinciana in Palm Beach, who was previously connected with the Ormond-on-the-Halifax.

Today the Royal Palm may be too small for the demands that are likely to be made upon it in the future. Visitors are constantly arriving from Nassau, Havana, Key West and Cedar Key and on rail from St. Augustine.

The editor also wrote that he was in Miami when the East Coast Railway [sic] ran its first freight trains on a regular schedule over 22 miles which extended “below Miami. He predicted “that within a few years the output of vegetables—particularly tomatoes— will be of such volume and quality as to astonish the world.”

The Royal Palm Hotel was severely damaged by the 1926 hurricane and was torn down in 1930. Eventually it was paved over with a parking lot near what became the Dupont Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami.

In 2003, in preparation for a $640 million hotel/condo development, a pre-project inspection  excavation gave up ceramic fragments and metal pieces that lay more than two feet beneath the earth. It was the remains of the Royal Palm Hotel (see index for Miami in the 1900s). Further digging yielded even more history: artifacts from a Tequesta settlement 10,000 years old. Development was halted and the Miami Circle, as it is known because of a circle of stones apparently left by the Indians, was declared a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009. The city established the site as Miami Circle Park, a green space, in 2011. It is part of Bayfront Park at 301 Biscayne Blvd.

Repairing seawall surrounding  the 38 ft
Miami Circle cultural landmark
Florida State Archives

Today Miami has nearly 414,000 residents and is considered a gateway to South American markets. It is also a city where slightly more than half its population was born in another country.  

Henry Flagler, as history has proved, had a knack for picking prime real estate …
Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources:

Daily Miami Metropolis, April 6, 1904

Sun-Sentinel, April 21, 2004
Wikipedia

Florida Memories

For more on how the Circle was saved see:

https://www.floridarambler.com/florida-bike-hike-trails/miami-circle-see-history-great-views-by-foot-or-bike/

Tags: Miami history, Henry Flagler, hotel history in Miami, Royal Palm Hotel, Miami in the early 1900s,Royal Palm, Miami Circle, Tequesta Indians

Overseas Highway energizes Key West - 1938

7-mile Bridge
Florida State Archives/Rast

By Jane Feehan

Henry Flagler was the first to connect Key West to the U.S. mainland with the completion of his overseas railroad in 1912. It operated until the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which killed hundreds and damaged miles of rail. But motor vehicle travel to the southernmost city in the U.S. was not cut off for long. The Overseas Highway, first proposed in the early 1920s, opened March 29, 1938.

Key West had been a thriving city of 20,000 before the railway closed. Without tourists, and during the Great Depression, prospects were brighter elsewhere. Greeks fishing for sponges moved to Tarpon Springs. Cigar makers moved to Tampa. The population of the island city dwindled to 8,000 (population in 2012 nearly 25,000).

The depression era Public Works Administration – the PWA - loaned Florida $3.6 million for the overseas highway project. It was the largest loan awarded Florida and at that time, one of the largest granted for highway construction in the entire country.

March, 1951
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

The overseas highway commission purchased 40 miles of rail from Flagler’s company (Flagler died May 1913) between Lower Matecumbe and Big Pine keys. The $640,000 purchase (it could have been as high as $7 million without cooperation from Florida East Coast Railway) included 13 miles of bridges and 15 miles of railroad bed. When completed, the highway's seven mile span was the longest continuous highway span in the world and featured a bridge 65 feet in the air. Total cost of the 127.5-mile highway project was $7.4 million.

More than 100 automobiles as well as a number of buses lined up to make the maiden trip across the scenic highway when it opened in 1938. Within a day, Key West housing accommodations were filled. The overseas highway now carries US. Route 1, which stretches to Maine. 

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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For more on Flagler, see "Henry Flagler" in index or use search box.

Sources:

Standiford, Les. The Last Train to Paradise. New York: Crown Publishers (2002).

Miami News, Mar. 30, 1938.

Miami News, Jun. 30, 1938

Tags: Overseas highway, oversea railroad, Henry M. Flagler, Florida East Coast Railway, Key West history, Florida history