What I learned from reading Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford.
When Henry Flagler, co founder of Standard Oil and one of the world's most famous and powerful men, announced that he would extend his far flung empire by building a railroad across the ocean, few could have anticipated how things would ultimately turn out.
Many immediately dismissed Flagler's intentions as impossible.
They were hard headed scientists, engineers, and businessmen who thought what Flagler proposed to build a railroad 153 miles from Miami to Key west, much of it over open water, was a crackpot notion on the face of it.
Flagler's folly, the press dubbed the project, though the man who proposed it was undeterred.
He would press on.
The story behind the very being of this railroad may be its most amazing aspect.
It is a story that concerns one of the world's richest men, one of the most difficult engineering feats ever conceived, and the most powerful storm ever to strike american shores.
In a sense, this railway is what remains of one of the last great gasps of the era of manifest destiny, and an undertaking that marked the true closing of the american frontier.
The building of the railroad across the ocean was a colossal piece of work, born of the same impulse that made individuals believe that pyramids could be raised, cathedrals erected, and continents tamed.
The highway is a ghost, really, all that remains of an era where men still lived who believed that with enough will and energy and money that anything could be accomplished.
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is last train to paradise, Henry Flagler, and the spectacular rise and fall of the railroad that crossed an ocean.
And it was written by Les Standefford.
Okay, before I jump back into the book, I just want to tell you how this fits into everything else that you and I have been talking about.
I've had this book for a very long time.
I haven't gotten around to reading it, and I think now's the perfect opportunity to do so, because I'm rereading the very next podcast I'm working on is I'm rereading the fantastic biography of John D.
Rockefeller called Titan.
I read it for all the way back on podcast number 16, but I didn't really know how to make a podcast back then, and that book is way too important.
And so I figured, before I reread that biography, let me go ahead and find a biography on Rockefeller's partner.
And I'm glad I did, because this book is absolutely incredible.
And I should have known it was good because I had read one of less's books in the past.