Flagler's Last Train to Paradise

Author Les Standiford, left, and Mitch Kaplan, owner of Books & Books bookstores, talk about Standiford's book, "Last Train to Paradise," at a lecture aboard the sailing yacht, Sea Cloud Spirit on a recent cruise (Photo by Gerry Barker)

By GERRY BARKER

It's a classic case of they said it couldn't be done.

It started in the 1870s, when Henry Flagler, founder of Standard Oil and one of America's wealthiest Gilded Age titans of industry, sought a warm climate for his ailing wife and discovered Florida.

Realizing its potential as a vacation mecca, Flagler built a string of resort hotels all along Florida's east coast, from St. Augustine to Palm Beach and south to Miami, and also constructed a railroad -- the Florida East Coast Railway -- to connect them. But why stop in Miami, when tropical Key West beckoned.

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