A Man of Determination Did This!

The bridge featured on the front of this post card is located 85 kilometers south of St. Augustine. It is on the Florida East Coast Railway line.

It is part of a rail empire built by a man who had no interest in railroads per se. Henry Flagler just wanted to improve the transportation system along “The American Riviera”, as he called it. He had retired (he was a founding member of Standard Oil) and wanted to get to St. Augustine to enjoy the sunshine. This website has a great, detailed description of the history of the Florida East Coast Railway.https://www.american-rails.com/fecry.html The modern Florida East Coast began with Flagler's acquisition of the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax River Railway. This narrow-gauge property started it all for the oil mogul. During the winter of 1883-1884, a 53 year-old retired Flagler spent vacation in historic St. Augustine, Florida. Flagler was appalled at the lack of transportation services into the region. Jacksonville was the furthest one could travel directly by rail; there was another 65 kilometers to go to get to St. Augustine. To reach St. Augustine, a hamlet of only 2,500 residents, one must board a steamboat to cross the St. Johns River and then catch a train on the narrow-gauge Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax River Railway. Flagler purchased this railway on December 31, 1885. He purchased several other railroads to help to connect the two dots. On January 20, 1890 a bridge was completed across the St. Johns River establishing direct service into Jacksonville. On September 9, 1895 Flagler's railroads became collectively known as the Florida East Coast Railway. Following the Florida East Coast Railway's creation, Flagler continued his southward push reaching New Smyrna Beach in 1892, Cocoa in 1893, West Palm Beach in 1894, and finally Miami on April 15, 1896. The main line from Jacksonville now extended 366 miles. This was in order to send tourists to the hotels and resorts he also now owed in southern Florida.

The post card was published by the Hugh C. Leighton Company. Adam Philips Leighton went to work at Chisholm Brothers, a book store on Congress Street in Portland, Maine on November 19, 1867 for $5 a week. In 1868 he was sent to the Grand Trunk railway station to take charge of the newsboys at the Chisholm railroad office. The Chisholms began to enlarge their book and news business on the railroad until they held a monopoly in the business on several railroad lines. Adam’s son, Hugh Chisholm Leighton later managed the company and began printing postcards in the United States instead of farming them out to printers in Europe. The Chisholm company had long specialized in view books illustrated first with lithographs and then with black-and-white photographs. Familiar with pictorial postcards used in Europe, Leighton purchased sheets of one-cent postals from the government and had single-colored pictures put on the side not reserved for an address. The first were in 1888. He later had others printed in Germany. This post card you are looking at was printed in Germany. It was printed and published before March 1, 1907, when the US Postal Service finally allowed addresses and messages on the backs of post cards. The early post cards bore the Chisholm company name. Adam eventually began to publish postcards under his own name and built the new enterprise into a substantial business. Adam Philips Leighton (1851-1922) Hugh Chisholm Leighton (1878-1943).

Florida East Coast Railroad continued...

The Overseas Railroad was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway

to Key West, located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula. Work on the line started in 1905 and was completed in 1912; the line was in daily passenger and freight service until its destruction by a hurricane in 1935. My wife and I joke a lot about cars driving down the road for kilometers with their turn signals on. We usually alert the other person by saying,"Guess he's goin' to Florida." Then the other person knows to look for a car with continuous turn signalling happening. I have to admit that she has asked me if I was going to Florida a couple of times. Today's blog post is taking us to Florida without the benefit of an ongoing turn signal. We are looking at three of my seven post cards that highlight the Florida East Railway's Long Key Viaduct. I will first tell you the story, then talk about the publisher of each post card at the end. I will simply intersperse the fronts of the post cards through the narrative as taken mostly from Wikipedia. The

construction problems were formidable; labor turnover was frequent and the cost was prohibitive. The first portion of the line, from Homestead to Key Largo, was across swamp land. Thankfully, the dredging of the drainage canals to clear the swamps provided the material to build up the roadbed. Worse than any other challenge was the weather: a hurricane in September 1906 destroyed the initial work on the Long Key Viaduct and killed more than 100 laborers. Hurricanes in 1909 and 1910 destroyed much of the completed railroad. After these hurricanes, work resumed at a faster pace — The owner of the railroad was 80 years old and wanted to ride all the way to Key West on his railroad. The completion of Seven Mile Bridge assured many that the line would soon be completed. Henry Flagler, by then blind, arrived in Key West on January 22, 1912, aboard his private rail car "Rambler", telling a welcoming crowd, “Now I can die happy. My dream is fulfilled.” Regular service on the 156-mile extension — dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" — began the following day, with through sleepers between New York and Key West with connections at Key West for passenger steamers and car ferries bound for Havana. Flagler died less than 18 months later in May 1913.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane washed away approximately 40 miles of the Middle Keys section of the line. In addition, the Long Key Fishing Camp was destroyed, along with a rescue train which was — with the exception of locomotive #447 — overturned by the storm surge at Islamorada, Florida. With Flagler gone, the railroad was unwilling to repair a line that had never repaid its construction cost — an unknown figure. It was later determined that the total cost of what had been derisively nicknamed "Flagler's Folly" exceeded $50 million ($1.31 billion today), all from his personal fortune.

The top post card, above was mailed in 1914, soon after the viaduct opened. It was published by the H. S. Kress Company. A publisher and large distributor of postcards through their national chain of Five & Dime stores. They were purchased by Genesco in 1964 who slowly began shutting the business down.

The middle post card was published by the Leighton & Valentine Company

out of New York City. Hugh C. Leighton was a printer and major publisher of national view-cards, especially scenes of New England. They printed most of their cards in four distinct styles employing halftone lithography. Most used a simple soft yet highly recognizable RGB pallet. While some cards were printed at their plant in the U.S. most were manufactured in Frankfort, Germany. Almost all their cards were numbered. They merged with Valentine & Sons in 1909.

The last of the post cards was published by the E.C. Kropp Company:

a publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would printed under the E.C. Kropp name. They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their latter linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. Sold to L.L. Cook in 1956 and they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S. This post card is an excellent example of a linen post card. The texture and weight of the card are obvious when one holds it and holds it up to the light. I hope you can see the texture in this close-up:

The Passenger Service is Gone, but the Railroad Still Exists

The two trains pictured on the front of this post card are the passenger

service ancestors of a railroad that still exists today. The Florida East Coast Railroad does not carry passengers any more. The following information is taken directly from their website: https://fecrwy.com/ The Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) is a Class II regional railroad that owns all of the 351-mile mainline track from Jacksonville, FL, down to Miami. It is the exclusive rail provider for PortMiami, Port Everglades and Port of Palm Beach. FEC Railway connects to the national railway system in Jacksonville, allowing it to provide rail service in and out of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina, into and out of Florida’s east coast. Based in Jacksonville, FEC provides end-to-end intermodal and carload solutions to customers who demand cost-effective and premium quality transportation solutions. This is the history of the railroad that I found in Wikipedia: When Flagler returned to Florida, in 1885 he began building a grand St. Augustine hotel, the Ponce de Leon Hotel. Flagler realized that the key to developing Florida was a solid transportation system, and consequently purchased the 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax River Railway (JStA&HR) on December 31, 1885. He also discovered that a major problem facing the existing Florida railway systems was that each operated on different gauge systems, making interconnection impossible. He converted the line to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge in 1890 and the small operation was incorporated in 1892. Flagler next purchased three additional existing railroads: the St. John's Railway, the St. Augustine and Palatka Railway, and the St. Johns and Halifax River Railway so that he could provide extended rail service on standard gauge tracks. By 1894, Flagler's railroad system reached what is today known as West Palm Beach. On September 7, 1895, the name of Flagler's system was changed from the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railway Company to the Florida East Coast Railway Company and incorporated. On April 15, 1896, track reached Biscayne Bay, the site of present-day downtown Miami. At the time, it was a small settlement of less than 50 inhabitants. When the town incorporated, on July 28, 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for the city's development by naming it Flagler. He declined the honor, persuading them to retain its old Indian name, Miami. I have posted about the Florida East Coast Railroad in the past. But, that was back in 2015. Next week I will re-post that episode of this blog's history.

The post card was printed by the Colorpicture Company based in Boston, Mass. It was a major publisher and printer of linen view-cards of the United States based in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts between 1938 and 1969. They later went on to publish photochromes and small spiral bound picture booklets under the name trade name Plastichrome in the 1950's.

Goin' to Florida

The Overseas Railroad was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway

to Key West, located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula. Work on the line started in 1905 and was completed in 1912; the line was in daily passenger and freight service until its destruction by a hurricane in 1935. My wife and I joke a lot about cars driving down the road for kilometers with their turn signals on. We usually alert the other person by saying,"Guess he's goin' to Florida." Then the other person knows to look for a car with continuous turn signalling happening. I have to admit that she has asked me if I was going to Florida a couple of times. Today's blog post is taking us to Florida without the benefit of an ongoing turn signal. We are looking at three of my seven post cards that highlight the Florida East Railway's Long Key Viaduct. I will first tell you the story, then talk about the publisher of each post card at the end. I will simply intersperse the fronts of the post cards through the narrative as taken mostly from Wikipedia. The

construction problems were formidable; labor turnover was frequent and the cost was prohibitive. The first portion of the line, from Homestead to Key Largo, was across swamp land. Thankfully, the dredging of the drainage canals to clear the swamps provided the material to build up the roadbed. Worse than any other challenge was the weather: a hurricane in September 1906 destroyed the initial work on the Long Key Viaduct and killed more than 100 laborers. Hurricanes in 1909 and 1910 destroyed much of the completed railroad. After these hurricanes, work resumed at a faster pace — The owner of the railroad was 80 years old and wanted to ride all the way to Key West on his railroad. The completion of Seven Mile Bridge assured many that the line would soon be completed. Henry Flagler, by then blind, arrived in Key West on January 22, 1912, aboard his private rail car "Rambler", telling a welcoming crowd, “Now I can die happy. My dream is fulfilled.” Regular service on the 156-mile extension — dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" — began the following day, with through sleepers between New York and Key West with connections at Key West for passenger steamers and car ferries bound for Havana. Flagler died less than 18 months later in May 1913.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane washed away approximately 40 miles of the Middle Keys section of the line. In addition, the Long Key Fishing Camp was destroyed, along with a rescue train which was — with the exception of locomotive #447 — overturned by the storm surge at Islamorada, Florida. With Flagler gone, the railroad was unwilling to repair a line that had never repaid its construction cost — an unknown figure. It was later determined that the total cost of what had been derisively nicknamed "Flagler's Folly" exceeded $50 million ($1.31 billion today), all from his personal fortune.

The top post card, above was mailed in 1914, soon after the viaduct opened. It was published by the H. S. Kress Company. A publisher and large distributor of postcards through their national chain of Five & Dime stores. They were purchased by Genesco in 1964 who slowly began shutting the business down.

The middle post card was published by the Leighton & Valentine Company

out of New York City. Hugh C. Leighton was a printer and major publisher of national view-cards, especially scenes of New England. They printed most of their cards in four distinct styles employing halftone lithography. Most used a simple soft yet highly recognizable RGB pallet. While some cards were printed at their plant in the U.S. most were manufactured in Frankfort, Germany. Almost all their cards were numbered. They merged with Valentine & Sons in 1909.

The last of the post cards was published by the E.C. Kropp Company:

a publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would printed under the E.C. Kropp name. They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their latter linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. Sold to L.L. Cook in 1956 and they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S. This post card is an excellent example of a linen post card. The texture and weight of the card are obvious when one holds it and holds it up to the light. I hope you can see the texture in this close-up: