It’s ended up being two months of website silence since I wrote up the Southeastern United States on my return from Florida to New York in April. The present Series of essays is meant to compliment, and complete, the discussion of that region. But first, a summary, with some additional directions.

Routes West, North, East   I do seem to dwell on routes. But routes are as important as destinations. We all know that Marco Polo’s destination was China, but it’s his route overland across Eurasia from Italy that he’s remembered for. And Columbus never got to his destination of India, since a little something called the Americas blocked his way, but it’s his route across the Atlantic TO what became his altered destination that he’s remembered for.

I want to summarize what we’ve said about North America, and also add a bit, before discussing the final direction of Routes South.

ROUTES WEST It’s Routes West (2007/12) you always hear about—just think of all the Wild West stories. They followed the pattern of trail to rail to road, starting in the Kansas City area, and later Chicago. The Santa Fe trail to Mexico eventually was extended de facto to Los Angeles when the area became part of the US. Then followed the southern rail route, and later highways, most notably Route 66. The Oregon Trail will remain open for discussion still when I go to the US Northwest this October. We’ll also see why it was the main route west, later followed by the northern rail route, and later still, highways. The central rail route to San Francisco is the stepchild of the northern route. There had been no direct trail there, only branches from the Oregon Trail, such as the Mormon (Branch) Trail to Salt Lake City and the California (Branch) Trail to Reno, the gold fields, and San Francisco.

Canada never had a trail west. I presume Canadians would have used the Oregon Trail as well. However rail did come and the cross-continental rail connection to Vancouver connected the ends of the country, later followed by the Trans-Canada Highway.

Routes west involving Mexico never developed beyond the Santa Fe Trail, to an area that eventually was no longer Mexico, but became US territory. The only rail connection to Mexico was the ill-fated one from Kansas City that was slated to go through the Copper Canon to Topolobampo (2007/2). It was only completed in sections on both sides of the border.

ROUTES NORTH Only two Routes North of any importance occur to me. One is the rail route going north from the main line at Winnipeg up to Churchill on Hudson’s Bay. It’s the only surface way to reach Churchill, known to visitors for its polar bear spotting.

Of course the most famous long-distance route north is the Alaska Highway, built during World War Two for defense reasons from Alberta diagonally into Alaska. Given its northern location and speed of construction, it was a dirt road to begin with (but then so was Route 66 only a decade and a half earlier), later gravel, and now, I understand it’s largely paved. At one time I considered driving it, and even had started plotting it out, but eventually abandoned the idea.

ROUTES EAST This is a bit unusual, but valid nevertheless. You have to visualize the heavily urbanized population center of the US, even now, but certainly in earlier times, as being the Northeast, primarily the string of coastal cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, but also extending up the coast to Halifax. Routes East from here are simple, even today: by water, specifically the famous Transatlantic crossing. If you look at a map showing commercial routes across the Atlantic, there’s the odd route here and there elsewhere (today mostly commercial, not passenger), but then a thick solid band showing the commerce on the Transatlantic route from New York (Boston, Halifax) to the area of the English Channel.

Canada being a wider country, the situation is a bit different. The Canadian urbanized region of Québec, Montreal, Toronto Ottawa lies, surprisingly, pretty much due north of the US one, but there’s still quite a bit of land to the east in Canada. The Saint Lawrence River is the water conduit to joining ships to the Transatlantic route. By land, the rail route east along the Saint Lawrence, then turning to Halifax (2005/6) is the land route east of consequence, later followed as well by the Trans-Canada Highway.

Routes South   But only second to the storied Routes West, it’s the Routes South that are the most interesting. Again we’re not including Mexico, but are referring to routes coming from the Northeast (and the Midwest) that end in the US Southeast. I will say there were two destinations, the first more easily defined than the second. Any ideas what they are?

Before we discuss what I see as the two Routes South of significance, we have to discuss, then put aside, the coastal routes. All the original colonies from New England down to Georgia (Florida was then Spanish) were on the water, which again shows the importance of accessibility—then exclusively by water—in the formation of geographic regions. From Halifax (with connections to the Saint Lawrence) to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and down to Charleston and Savannah, you travelled by boat. In time, these connections were replaced by rail. I’ll give as an example again the story of the Long Island Rail Road (2006/11). The main route from New York to Boston had been by water from the Hudson side of Lower Manhattan, which is the point I’m making now. The LIRR was established to replace this, from Brooklyn east on Long Island to the North Fork, then via ferry, to continue by rail in New England to Boston. These coastal water routes were typical into the early 20C.

As an extra at this point it’s worth mentioning two of the most famous routes “south” ever. I’ll use New York to represent all the cities in the northeastern region when I say that ships from “New York” to California first would take the incredibly long route “south” around South America and Cape Horn to then return on the Pacific side to California. Later this famous route was replaced with ships sailing south to use the shortcut through the Panama Canal. Next January I’ll sail on the new Queen Victoria on this latter route, from New York, through the Canal, to Los Angeles.

Having taken care of the above special cases, let’s get to the destinations for the two Routes South as I see them.

NEW ORLEANS There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind, after the recent discussion of Louisiana, that New Orleans was by far the primary attraction to get people (and merchandise) moving southward. This was true starting at least in the 1700’s and strongly through the 1800’s, and remains so today, even given the later interlopers such as Houston and Atlanta. (As important as Atlanta is today, just remembered that it developed from an important intersection of rail routes. Put differently, Atlanta exists as the result of the of routes that got people there.)

In the West, routes started as trails, but the East was different. (One exception could be the Natchez Trace, a trail connecting Nashville and Natchez, but it was more regional than national in scope.) Just as was true along the cities of the east coast, water was king in getting to the prime destination of New Orleans, and secondarily to other Gulf Coast cities like Biloxi, Mobile, and even Pensacola. First, “water” means the Mississippi, specifically the Lower Mississippi, since the Upper Mississippi didn’t yet have a heavy population. Then, above the Lower Mississippi, the connection would be the Ohio River to Pittsburgh. In other words Pittsburgh was the start of the water route to New Orleans. How to get from New York to Pittsburgh? I refer you again to the Allegheny Portage Railroad (2006/10) and the Pennsylvania Canal, which involved dragging canal boats over mountains. How’s that for a water route from New York to Orleans?

But there was a second water route from New York to New Orleans, which had a very interesting variation in the form of a short cut. The full route would just be an extension of the east coast shipping routes going down as far as Charleston and Savannah. There was little of interest in peninsular Florida, but boats coming down the east coast could continue way, way to the south around that bothersome Florida peninsula, then maybe stop in Key West before coming way, way back to the north in the Gulf of Mexico. It was long, yet it got you there. But it’s the shortcut that’s interesting. Any ideas of how you could have a shortcut on that shipping route?

We have to consider that railroads, at least for short runs, were already becoming popular. Remember, even on the Pennsylvania Canal, the canal boats filled with passengers on the left Philadelphia on rail cars for the first stretch. Also be aware that rail and sail can be combined in various ways.

A “sail” stretch can come at the end of a rail route. Although local trains enter San Francisco from the south along its peninsula, cross-country trains, including the California Zephyr, end in Oakland on the East Bay. Traditionally, passengers then took the ferry across to San Francisco, although today they’re bussed across the bridge.

New York had a similar situation. The Hudson forming a formidable water barrier, only New York Central trains coming south down the east bank of the river entered New York by land. For the longest time, trains from the west would end in New Jersey, on the west bank, and ferries would complete passengers’ journeys. This was true for a number of railroads, including the Pennsylvania, until it built its tunnel under the Hudson allowing access to its new Pennsylvania Station. Out my window on the other side of the Hudson is a beautiful stone building with towers, and ferry slips in front. Today it’s used as a museum, but until the 1950’s it was the terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, with ferry access to some of the railroad piers right where Battery Park City now stands. (Jersey trains now use that same tunnel into Penn Station.)

Then there’s rail-sail-rail, that is, a short ferry trip connecting two longer rail trips. That’s what LIRR trains did when they connected to Boston in the early days. That’s what trains from London to Paris did across the English Channel before the Chunnel was built. That’s what trains from Hamburg to Copenhagen still do.

Ah, but now we come to what is to me the most interesting: sail-rail-sail, or a short rail trip connecting two sailings, and I have two examples. I refer to my previous visit to the Panama Canal (2004/4). After transiting the canal, we took the 55-minute ride from the Pacific side back to the Atlantic side (and back) on the Panama Railroad, now used mainly for tourist trips, but even during the building of the canal used to assist construction. But before that, it served its original purpose of sail-rail-sail. Ships from New York would dock on the Atlantic side, passengers would take the train quickly across Panama, then get on ships on the Pacific side again.

Well, if Panama was a land obstacle in that sailing example, what would have been the obstacle sailing from New York to New Orleans? A little thing called Florida. Hence the founding of the Florida Railroad Company in 1853 to build a cross-Florida railroad. I’ve mentioned in the past the charming Victorian town of Fernandina Beach at the northern tip of the northernmost barrier island on Florida’s Atlantic coast, Amelia Island. The Spanish had founded Fernandina in honor of King Ferdinand, and in more modern times, tourist-minded town officials apparently affixed “Beach” to the original name. On the inland side of Fernandina there is still the old rail station, now used for the Chamber of Commerce. I’ve also mentioned pleasant Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast, just south of the mouth of the Suwannee river. Cedar Key is a small island connected by a causeway to the mainland. There is no sign of a railroad here unless you know how to look at the street pattern and judge where tracks used to be. These two locations were chosen to be the termini of the one-line railroad, which took eight years to build its 155-mile/250-kilometer length (by slave labor—a sign of the times) and was finished in 1861, just in time for the Civil War. It shows the importance of this route that, about a year after the first run of the railroad, both terminals were conquered by Union troops. In later years, the line was merged into other railroads, and today the line no longer serves either of its terminals. But do consider how it worked originally in both directions as part of the sail-rail-sail route: ships from New York (or Boston, or others) would arrive at Fernandina, passengers and freight would cross by rail to Cedar Key, then board another ship for New Orleans (or Mobile, or others).

The Mississippi and coastal “sail” routes to New Orleans eventually gave way to the major cross-country rail routes, and later to the highway system. The two passenger rail routes that still illustrate the directionality from the North to New Orleans is Amtrak’s City of New Orleans, which runs along the Mississippi from Chicago to New Orleans (I haven’t ridden that one yet) and Amtrak’s Crescent from New York to New Orleans, which I rode last year (2007/1). The former duplicates the route of the Mississippi steamboats of Mark Twain’s day, and the graceful curve of the latter route through Atlanta replicates on land (and shortens) the sail-rail-sail route that had existed through Florida. This train didn’t get its name because of the shape of its route but because New Orleans is called the Crescent City, based on the shape of the river bend on which it lies.

FLORIDA The destination of the other Route South is Florida, which at one time consisted of two parts, East Florida and West Florida.

Saint Augustine (1565) on Florida’s (north)east coast and Pensacola (1559) on Florida’s (north)west coast are among the oldest Spanish settlements in the New World. When Florida was ceded to Great Britain in 1763, they became, respectively, the capitals of East Florida and West Florida, which were divided at the Apalachicola River.

Modern Florida consists of all of East Florida, and the part of West Florida from the Apalachicola River to just beyond Pensacola. The rest of West Florida today is divided between Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. While no longer divided east-west, Florida was, and really in a sense, remains, divided north-south.

Look at Florida and imagine a line across the top of the peninsula area separating northern Florida, roughly the panhandle east to Jacksonville, from the rest of the peninsula. These are the two practical divisions of the state in that century, and in reality, to this day. [At this point we need a footnote. Key West, on the last of the Florida keys and at this time not yet connected to any of the others by bridge, always remains the exception. It’s not the north, it’s not the peninsula, it’s Key West, and different from both. It should be noted though, that Key West was for decades, the largest city in all of Florida, well into the early 20C, but this largest city had a population of only 20,000.]

So always keeping Key West apart from this north-south division as a special, isolated case, picture this. The northern strip of Florida was, and remains, the Old South. Key West may have become the largest single city, but the north was the most populous region. Here was the center of the logging industry, and other manufacturing. As mentioned earlier, Apilachicola was and is the center of the oyster industry. When Florida voted to secede, this is where the population lived that supported that vote.

In school, I remember being amazed to find that Miami is not the capital of Florida, but now I realize how much of a 20C upstart of a city that is. When Florida became a state, and a capital had to be chosen, both of the old Spanish capitals, Saint Augustine and Pensacola, were natural contenders. Because of the rivalry, neither was chosen, but a compromise was reached. By that time, a trail had developed between the two of them. The midpoint was found on that trail, and Tallahassee (tal.a.HASS.ee) was founded there to be the state capital. (Because of this history, Tallahassee is not on the water, and has traditionally needed rail connections to any port facilities.) But in any case, this shows that this northern area was essentially the cornerstone of the state, and the location of the state capital continues to illustrate that.

People today are amazed at what the attitude was at the time to the peninsula. It was an undesirable wasteland, a tropical Siberia no one wanted. It was swamps, alligators, heat, disease—a place to be avoided. The entire peninsula area south of the northern strip, but before Key West, had a population, aside from the Seminole Indians, of only 700 hardy settlers, mostly in scattered fishing villages along the two coasts. There were no internal connections to speak of. To me, just as Siberia was traditionally an appendage to the population center of European Russia, so was the Florida peninsula a tropical appendage (except for Key West) to the population center in the north Florida strip. One other thing shows the mindset of the time: much of central Florida was one large, underpopulated county. And worse: it was named Mosquito County. Does that tell you something?

[Today there are 67 counties in Florida, but in 1821 there were just two large ones, one each for the two old Spanish cities. Escambia County was in the west with Pensacola as its capital and Saint Augustine was in Saint John’s County in the east. Notably, the Suwannee River divided the two. All later counties were subdivided from these two original ones. Escambia is now tiny, and the westernmost county in the panhandle; Saint John’s, south of Jacksonville, is also correspondingly reduced. Anyway, this Mosquito County (the Spanish, too, had called the coast there “Los Mosquitos” because of the insect-plagued saltwater marshes) was carved out of Saint John’s County in 1824 by the territorial council. With statehood in 1845, Mosquito County changed its name to Orange County because of its orange groves, but it also has been reduced by the formation of other counties; Orlando is its seat.]

We’ll talk about what changed this situation, but it’s worth noting the differences to this day between these two areas. The speech of North Florida sounds southern, and southerners cross the borders from Georgia and Alabama to vacation on its Gulf Coast beaches (jokingly called the Redneck Riviera). This is logical, since the oddity of the Florida panhandle, which had once continued all along the Gulf Coast to physically connect to Mexico, cuts off what would have been the natural Gulf coastline of, say, Georgia. Today, the speech of peninsular Florida reflects to a large extent the speech of the northerners, midwesterners, Canadians, and Europeans who for a century have essentially colonized the area. Put another way, bagel shops were common in Miami far long before they spread to North Florida.

Also note that this underpopulated area was watched over by the military in case of uprisings of Native Americans or anyone else, just as in the West. If, in the West, Fort Collins and Fort Laramie became cities, in Florida we to this day have Fort Lauderdale, Fort Meyers, and others. Downtown Tampa had had a village of Fort Brooke adjacent to it, which it annexed in 1907, but today, all you see there is a Fort Brooke parking garage.

With this knowledge, we can now talk about routes. No long-distance trails from the North ever developed to Florida, since all the routes were by water. That leaves it to the railroads, and railroad routes it was that developed peninsular Florida, two in fact.

We have reduced the area in question from all Florida to just peninsular Florida. But a wilderness is not a destination, like New Orleans, so we need to look further. What would attract railroad builders to build railroads essentially to nowhere? Yes, they wanted to fill the area, but you need to have a specific goal.

A first thought would be Key West, and that’s true to an extent, but as nice as Key West is, it’s just a small island, at the time still quite bridgeless. It’s not a strong enough destination.

Keep in mind the attraction Mexico had for the builders of that (unsuccessful) railroad from Kansas City to Topolobampo, and it will lead you to the answer. Key West wasn’t enough. It was Havana that was the goal, especially as the capital of a country producing sugar, cigars and more. I find it amusing that Floridians sometimes grumble that there are too may Cubans living among them, yet it was the attraction of Cuba to railroaders that developed Florida in the early 20C. And also beyond, since it was expected that the completion of the Panama Canal would further fuel commerce from Florida. As an example, note the name of Panama City up in the panhandle, which was called that to show it was ready to connect to Panama. And Key West was not only the largest and wealthiest city in Florida at the time, it was the closest deep-water US port to the canal.

So we’re ready for our fine-honed answer: the second Route South, in addition to those to New Orleans, is panhandle Florida, with the final destination of Havana, via Key West (plus Panama). That sounds more complex, but it’s more accurate.

THE TWO HENRYS The two rail routes to Florida were developed by two men named Henry. Henry Plant brought his railroad to the Gulf coast of Florida, and Henry Flagler to the Atlantic coast. It’s probably more than a coincidence, since it’s widely thought that they agreed to divide up Florida between them. While the New Orleans routes, being originally by water, date from earlier periods, since Florida routes were by rail, the settlement of peninsular Florida is essentially a 20C phenomenon (that started in the 1890’s). That’s why an “upstart” city like Miami is so young when compared to Tallahassee, and certainly when compared to Saint Augustine and Pensacola.

Even with the destination of Key West and Havana in mind, there had to be some basis for getting people to populate peninsular Florida, and the reality of what happened is so very logical, but is almost humorous. One jokes about the effect of tourism on Florida today, but the reality is that it was tourism, as pursued separately by Plant and Flagler, that settled Florida and brought nationwide, if not worldwide, attention to it. This was done by building luxury hotels along the rail routes. In the 1890’s only the wealthy could afford to travel, so luxury hotels is what it was to be. Where there had been no destinations in peninsular Florida, Plant and Flagler created them in the form of these hotels-resorts.

GULF COAST—HENRY PLANT Tampa, which had outside access by sea but only the most rudimentary outside access by land (by wagon), awaited Plant’s railroad eagerly as its construction slowly approached, so that people could reach the outside world overland. The route came down through Plant City, named for him, and entered through Ybor City to what is now the beautifully restored Tampa Union Station, then continued through downtown as it still does today (for freight), then, beyond the Hillsborough River, a spur pulled behind Plant’s Tampa Bay Hotel, so that guests could alight almost on its rear verandah. The rail route then continued down past what is now Restaurant Row on South Howard to Port Tampa, which is still a commercial port. Then, Plant ships (remember rail ‘n’ sail) continued on down the coast, first to Key West, then to Havana.

It is safe to say that this luxurious hotel (1891) caused Tampa to grow from the tiny village it had been to what it is today. It had 511 rooms, was open only from December to April and is ¼ mile / ½ kilometer long. It has an unusual eclectic design referred to as Moorish Revival, and includes six minarets, four cupolas and three bulbous onion domes, all above the large Victorian verandahs. Plant brought furniture and artifacts from Europe and beyond to furnish this luxury hotel, which flourished from its opening up until 1930, when the Depression killed it. It had the first elevator in Florida, which still operates and is one of the oldest in the country. It was the first place in Florida to have electric lights and telephones. Its grounds extended to 150 acres / 61 hectares, and the building itself covered 6 acres / 2.4 hectares. It charged a pricey $5 to $15 per night, while other hotels were charging from $1.25 to $2.00. Famous guests ran the gamut from Sarah Bernhardt to Babe Ruth, who signed his first baseball contract in the hotel dining room. In its day, it welcomed at various times both the Prince of Wales and Queen of England, and a few years ago, the current Queen Elizabeth visited it.

Two things illustrate the importance of this route connection down to Tampa, then to Key West and Havana. During the Spanish-American War, the military used the hotel as its base of operations. While enlisted men camped on the hotel grounds, officers stayed at the hotel. As you may imagine, this included Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, on the way to action in Havana.

Coming up from the other direction was the arrival of the cigar industry from Havana, first to Key West, then to Tampa. This coastal shipping route had been developing even before Plant arrived in the development of Ybor City in 1885 (2008/1), and the new rail service extended it even further.

The Plant railroad system had the most mileage of any in Florida, and Plant ships also went to Mobile, Jamaica and Honduras. The Tampa Bay Hotel was the premier one of the eight destination hotels Plant built in Florida. The other surviving one is the Belleview in nearby Belleaire, while all the others either burned or were torn down.

While most of the building of the Tampa Bay Hotel is now Plant Hall of the University of Tampa, the ground floor of the south wing is now the Plant Museum, which I became a member of on what would have been the hotel’s centennial in 1991. It shows how the rooms of the hotels looked, and has numerous artifacts illustrating the history of the hotel and the Victorian era in Florida. Periodically, the museum presents live theater in the music room in the form of actors portraying actual former employees of the hotel. The presentation is aptly called Upstairs-Downstairs at the Tampa Bay Hotel. Actors might portray in monolog form the hotel hunting and fishing guide Arthur Schleman, the telegraph operator Pauline Smith, Otis Freedman the head waiter, or Maggie Stroud, the laundress. Complementing those Downstairs characters, others might portray Upstairs in the form of First Lady Edith Roosevelt, who visited Teddy while he was here, or Richard Harding Davis, a news correspondent who covered the Spanish-American War. This is an additional example of what I’ve described in the past as “time travel” à la Williamsburg—having actors portray characters in situ (albeit on a stage)--with the additional advantage of the characters having been actual, real people from the time period.

ATLANTIC COAST—HENRY FLAGLER Flagler’s strategy was the same. His Florida East Coast Railway reached Saint Augustine, where he had built the Ponce de Leon Hotel, now part of Flagler College. From West Palm Beach, he built an extension over the bay known as Lake Worth to the barrier island of Palm Beach. His Breakers hotel there is still the major hotel venue. He also built his mansion there, Whitehall, where his private rail car can be viewed on the grounds. Flagler’s determination to continue further south only grew gradually, since he had considered terminating his railroad in West Palm Beach. But in the winter of 1894-5 there were severe freezes in central Florida, which convinced him he was not yet quite in the tropics. Julia Tuttle, a major businesswoman in the tiny village of Miami, then convinced him to continue further south. In a story that may be partially apocryphal, but is an oft-quoted, fun story nevertheless, at the time of the freeze Tuttle supposedly sent Flagler several boughs of a blossoming orange tree to show him that the freeze hadn’t come down as far as Miami. Whether it really happened that way or not, Flager extended his railroad to Miami.

From Miami, the Florida East Coast Railway had shipping extensions to Nassau in the Bahamas, and also to Havana, so building further was not necessary to reach Havana, yet in 1905, Flagler made the decision, perhaps a decision of a romantic dreamer, to build an extension under the name of the Florida Overseas Railroad, a name which by itself has thrilling connotations. Flagler would bring his railroad down from Miami, onto the Keys, and actually get trains all the way to Key West by connecting all the Keys with bridges. To me, just the thought of taking his railroad to sea is mind-boggling. Plant, on the Gulf coast, had to sail to Key West, then to Havana, but Flagler reached Key West on dry land.

The engineering involved was incredible. With all the islands involved, 51 bridges had to be designed and built to cover the 119 miles / 192 kilometers. The most famous is the Seven Mile Bridge, much of it really a causeway, which runs 6.7 miles / 10.8 kilometers over water. Actually, a full 20% of the entire route was over water. Construction took seven years, and the most spectacular railroad in the world opened on 21 January 1912. Flagler did live to see it happen, although he died the next year. But talk about routes! What could be more spectacular than what was billed as “the railroad that goes to sea”.

But, incredibly, it lasted a mere 23½ years. The money was in freight, not in passengers (this foretells the rail events of the 1960’s when US railroads abandoned passenger service entirely in favor of freight, and Amtrak was formed to offer unified passenger service). Then unfortunately, there was no flood of imported goods from ships coming from Panama, since there had been a change in technology and, ironically, ships no longer needed a refueling stop in Key West. By the time of the Depression, the Florida Overseas Railroad was already in receivership. But that’s not what killed it. To picture what did kill it, just think about New Orleans and hurricane Katrina.

In 1935 they hadn’t started naming hurricanes yet, so the one in question is simply called the Labor Day Hurricane. Just before Labor Day that year a Category 5 hurricane hit the Keys. Picture that the Keys are just barely above sea level, and that the floodwaters came in at 7-9 feet / 2.1-2.7 meters. Hundreds were killed. Although the bridges were OK, 40 miles / 64 kilometers of track were simply swept away. But one event seemed to define the tragedy, and I’ve seen the available newsreel footage to document it. A rescue train had been sent out from Miami to bring people to the mainland. Out in the Keys, in the town of Islamorada, a 20-foot / 6-meter wall of water overwhelmed this train. The engine survived, but the passenger cars were crushed. Of the thousand people living in the area, half were killed.

Rail management could not afford to restore the railroad. The State of Florida acquired both the railroad and the right-of-way along the Keys, and tried to decide what to do. Their decision would be finalized only after three years.

The Routes West had shifted over time three ways, trail-to-rail-to-road, and the Route South to New Orleans had also shifted three ways, but instead sail-to-rail-to-road. But the Route South to Florida was a late bloomer, starting in the 1890’s and essentially a 20C phenomenon. As the railroad era in Florida had been progressing for some time at this point, there followed only a two-stage shift, just rail-to-road. Before the later highway era of the Interstates, two earlier highway routes to Florida developed and are worth mentioning.

From the Midwest, as early as 1914 there was talk of developing the Dixie Highway to Florida. It was constructed between 1915 and 1927, and was essentially a route from Chicago to Miami. As the US highway system further developed, the Dixie Highway was renumbered to many local US Highway numbers, so it’s hard to follow just where it was. Yet, many areas along the way, notably Miami itself, still have local streets named either Dixie Highway or Old Dixie Highway.

From the Northeast, US 1 was developed from Maine south along the coast and is essentially in the minds of many easterners the traditional way to enjoy driving along the coastline at one’s leisure, although few today would consider driving its full length. It had reached Miami, and from there we can pick up the rail-to-road story in the Keys.

The local road system had already been developing in the Keys, ironically spurred along by the fact that the Overseas Railroad went the whole way to Key West. A highway bridge from the mainland had been built, and a road system had gradually developed on the Keys around the local rail stations on the various islands. Eventually these early local roads were connected, except for a notable 40-mile / 64-kilometer gap that necessitated an expensive four-hour car ferry trip for anyone wanting to drive the whole way to Key West.

After the 1935 hurricane, as said earlier, the state had acquired the railroad and right-of-way, and debated which way to go, rail or road. I find it interesting that this is a rare example in all the routes across North America that a conscious decision was to be made between modes. The state opted for a road, and the fabled Overseas Railroad was no more.

In 1936, the railbed was transformed into a highway bed. Bridges were widened, although often not sufficiently to auto standards, and some side railings of bridges were literally made of old track. Consider the irony: rails to railings. Between the two bridges offering access from the mainland, the former rail bridge was chosen for the new highway, since it lies further to the west, and shortens the route; the former highway bridge now serves local traffic. In 1938, three years after the hurricane, what had been the Overseas Railroad was renamed, aptly and accurately, the Overseas Highway. At least the over-water imagery would remain the same.

The ride along the Keys is still among the most spectacular of routes. I remember doing it at least twice over the old, narrow rail bridges. But by the 1970’s, those bridges were aging, and between 1978 and 1982, most if not all were replaced by parallel bridges, which, having been built for cars, are more comfortable to drive, since you don’t have those railings inches away from the side of your car. Most of the old bridges, though, still remain, used as parkland, pedestrian walkways or for fishing. It’s comforting to see the past of this “route of routes” standing beside the present.

42,000 cars drive daily today along the Keys. US 1 now runs 2200 miles / 3541 kilometers, from Fort Kent, Maine, down to Key West, Florida, and Beverly and I enjoyed seeing the sign in Key West saying “End: US 1”. But given the length of US 1, its most spectacular section has to be the Overseas Highway along the Florida Keys to Key West.