OK... I will admit, I was expecting a dry history book with lots of boring facts and details.. I was wrong..
This book was extremely well written and absolutely fascinating.. I driven the boat under the rail road bridges thousands of times and never thought about what an amazing engineering feat his was for the early 1900s. It is unbelievable how much we have progressed and advanced in technology in just 100 years.. Miami was a small, isolated village with mud streets, weather forecasts were done with horse hair in a glass of water acting as a barometer..(not good during hurricane season), supplies brought in by steam ships, etc..
Amazon.com Review
In Last Train to Paradise novelist Les Standiford has written a lively, felicitous account of the building of the Florida East Coast Railway, which, for a little over two decades, connected mainland Florida with Key West. Henry Morrison Flagler, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil partner and, in many eyes, the true genius behind that company, embarked on the project in 1905 when he was 74 years old. The railroad, which crossed more than 150 miles of open sea, was an engineering feat nearly equal in scale and difficulty to the digging of the Panama Canal. Standiford's narrative skillfully blends tales of construction perils (not the least of which were escadrilles of mosquitoes) with brief, illuminating travelogues and natural histories, pocket descriptions of life in early 20th-century Florida, and a truly gripping description of an epic standoff between Mother Nature, in the form of a monstrous hurricane, and a stalled, 160-ton steam locomotive. With nary a single missed note, this fascinating tale is popular history at its best. --H. O'Billovich
The railroad and its construction are showcased in "Flagler's Speedway to Sunshine," a comprehensive new exhibit at the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House
