Cultural Compass / History
Julia & Henry: Strictly Business.
The bloody Seminole wars and inaccessibility held the Biscayne Bay population to a handful of families for most of the 19th century. Julia Tuttle changed that in 1891. She set out to create a city in the wilderness.
Julia Tuttle
She envisioned a great city, the best in the southland, she said in a rare interview with Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway newsletter. A woman of great foresight, she prophesied that her great city would become a center of trade with South America and a gateway to the Americas.
The newsletter’s editor wrote: “Mrs. Tuttle sent me a note inviting me to her home. It was a pleasure for me to grant her request. On my arrival, she said: ‘I have a new inspiration regarding the city of Miami. and want to tell it to you for I know that you will remember it, and some time use it. I want to talk to you, and don’t laugh at my predictions, for I feel sure that they all will come true. All these years I have had but one thought and that is to see Miami grow to one of the largest cities if not the largest, in the southland. I have had many discouragements that perhaps to one of a different temperament might have proven fatal — but the one thought and that at some future time these dreams of Miami’s greatness would prove true has urged me on all these years.”
Julia Tuttle had equally bright visions regarding the port of Miami: “It will not be many years hence when Miami will be the most important port on the Atlantic coast in the South…. South American vessels will finally ply between their home ports and Miami, and Miami will become the great center of the South American trade. Vessels from all ports of the world will call on Miami, making Miami the greatest commercial center of all the southland.”
Her vision depended on the railway reaching Fort Dallas, her adopted home. It depended on her persuading Henry Flagler to extend his railway 60 miles south from Palm Beach. She had tried and tried, but Flagler remained disinterested. If anything softened the heart of a shrewd businessman, Julia Tuttle knew, it had to be a nice helping of free land.
She also knew timing was of the essence. When the Great Freeze of 1894–1895 destroyed the old orange belt of central and northern Florida, ruining groves and wiping out fortunes overnight, she promptly offered Flagler not only half her kingdom for the train, but she gave him assurances that her Miami River subtropical paradise was immune to the freeze.
Urban Myth?
Romantics claim Julia Tuttle sent Flagler, then stationed in St. Augustine, an orange blossom, and its aroma evaporated his resistance. The truth might be more pragmatic. His surveyor, Ingraham, probably took upon himself to bring the boss a box of oranges and lemons as proof that in Biscayne Country business proceeded as normal while in northern altitudes the freeze killed crops.
Les Sandiford states in his book Last Train to Paradise: “Those who moved to Fort Dallas to seek their fortunes were interested in encouraging others to join them, of course. Among the most active of those pioneers was a Cleveland, Ohio, woman named Julia Tuttle, who had fallen in love with the wild but exotic setting during a visit to her father’s homestead.”
And she was armed with the famous 644 acres she had purchased
Henry Flagler
The successful industrialist, the architect behind Standard Oil, one of the most successful corporations ever, confronted setbacks in his personal life. His wife, Mary, died on May 18, 1881, at age 47, leaving him with a young son to raise alone.
Two years after Mary’s death, Flagler married Ida Alice Shourds. Flagler was eighteen years older. Soon after their wedding, the couple traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, which they found charming but lacking adequate hotels and the transportation system he considered a mess. The Florida rail system was, indeed, chaotic and inefficient, “a hopscotch created by several owners and speculators,” according to Flagler’s official biography.
Florida had the potential to become a tourism destination if the train issue was fixed. So, he purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad — eventually to become the Florida East Coast Railway.
He returned to St. Augustine in 1885 and started construction of the 540-room Hotel Ponce de Leon, which opened January 10, 1888. It was a great success. Two years later, Flagler built a railroad bridge across the St. Johns River to gain access to the southern half of the state.
About the bridge over the St. Johns River, Les Standiford tells this anecdote in his book Last Train to Paradise: “The moment the engineers heard of Flagler’s plans, they came forward quickly, announcing that no one had ever sunk railroad support piers in ninety feet of water, the depth they would have to cross. Flagler pondered this information for a moment, then turned back to the engineers. “Cannot you build that pier in ninety feet of water, then?” After a brief huddle, the engineers had decided. “‘We can.” Flagler replied: “Then build it!”
In 1894, he built the Hotel Royal Poinciana on the shores of Palm Beach, the largest resort in the world. And Flagler extended his railroad further south to West Palm and built the Palm Beach Inn (renamed The Breakers in 1901) overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Miami at last
The severe freezes of 1894 and 1895 affected the area around Palm Beach, but not the settlement of Fort Dallas. Julia Tuttle, the Florida East Coast Canal and Transportation Company, and the Boston and Florida Atlantic Coast Land Company each offered Flagler land to bring his railroad further south.
Flagler, the Standard Oil man, John E. Rockefeller’s partner, was not going to take Mrs. Tuttle’s climate assurances at face value. Before accepting her Shakespearean offer, he paid the lady a visit.
He traveled by train from St. Augustine to Palm Beach; to Fort Lauderdale by boat, and the remaining thirty miles by foot, horse and carriage. An arduous journey for a man in his sixties.
Julia Tuttle treated Henry Flagler to lunch at the Peacock Inn in Coconut Grove, and over a delicious green turtle soup that Isabella Peacock had prepared for the occasion, reiterated the business proposal. But was he ready to strike the deal and make her dream of a great city a reality?
Judging by the presence of his chief of railroad operations and hotel designers, Flagler probably had his mind made up, and a deal was soon struck. He received half of her allotment, plus one hundred acres for the train terminus, and his grand hotel. Another one hundred acres he got from William and Mary Brickell on the south side of the Miami River.
In return, he promised to bring the railroad within a year and build a grand hotel, the Royal Palm, and create a modern city. The terms of the agreement were confirmed in a letter he sent dated April 22, 1895. It took him 10 months to build the railway, from start to finish.
The first train arrived April 15, 1896.
Appearances
How did Flagler appear to Julia Tuttle? There is no record of her intimate thoughts about Flagler. But Les Standiford rescued a description by Edwin Lefevre, a financial writer for the New York Sun, who had been sent to interview Flagler, that might have coincided with her perception:
“His hair is of clean, glistering silver, like the cropped mustache and eyebrows. They see his complexion, which is neither ruddy nor baby-pink, but what one might call a virile red. He has a straight nose and strong chin… The eyes are a clear blue — some might say violet. They must have been very keen once; today their expression is not easy to describe, not exactly shrewd nor compelling nor suspicious; though you feel they might have been all of those, years ago… eyes that gleam but never flame… Handsome old man! Under his fourscore years, shoulders have bowed slightly but there is no semblance of decay.”
And how did Julia Tuttle appear to Flagler? In the words of historian Helen Muir, Julia Tuttle was almost a beauty. “Her face is a tad too square for perfection, but her vivacious determination and femininity captivated men.”
The end
Julia Tuttle did not live much longer, but long enough to realize that she needed financial resources to bring her dream to fruition, resources she did not have. So, she did what future generations of Miamians in her shoes have been doing ever since: she borrowed money, heavily.
In the book Miami, the City of the Future, T.D. Allman writes: “The establishment of Miami had not made Julia Tuttle rich, it had impoverished her, even though Flagler himself had done quite well out of the deal. Tuttle’s debt, like Flagler’s wealth, flowed inescapably from that most primal of all Miami relationships, the relationship between land and money. Flagler could draw on his immense Standard Oil fortune to develop his Miami holdings. But to develop her own real estate, Julia Tuttle, like many a later Miami landowner, had to go to the banks.”
And Allman reminds us that dreamers tend to make inept financiers. Julia Tuttle, the dreamer, got her city, and Flagler, the financier, got richer. “Flagler was not a heartless man, but he didn’t build Standard oil by paying off his competitors’ bank loans. ‘I don’t want you to suffer but I cannot accept responsibility for your suffering,’ he informed Julia Tuttle when she appealed for help shortly before her death. ‘For months past, I have advised against you becoming so deeply involved in debt.’
Julia Tuttle died on September 14, 1898, merely two years after the incorporation of Miami. Said a poet, like stars, dreams might be unreachable, but always guide sailors. 126 years after the birth of Miami, Julia Tuttle’s city in the wilderness is, well, we all know what Miami is today.
[This article is based on DOWNTOWN MIAMI HISTORY, a book edited by Raul Guerrero. More information, click here.]
