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Last Train to Paradise is acclaimed novelist Les Standiford's fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad--one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores. In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller and the true mastermind behind Standard Oil, concocted the dream of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open ocean--an engineering challenge beyond even that of the Panama Canal. "The financiers considered the project and said, Unthinkable. The engineers pondered the problems and from all came one verdict, Impossible. . . ." But build it they did, and the railroad stood as a magnificent achievement for twenty-two years. Once dismissed as "Flagler's Folly," it was heralded as "the Eighth Wonder of the World"--until a will even greater than Flagler's rose up in opposition. In 1935, a hurricane of exceptional force, which would be dubbed "the Storm of the Century," swept through the tiny islands, killing some 700 residents and workmen and washing away all but one sixty-foot section of track, on which a 320,000-pound railroad engine stood and "gripped its rails as if the gravity of Jupiter were pressing upon it." Standiford brings the full force and fury of this storm to terrifying life. In spinning his saga of the railroad's construction, Standiford immerses us in the treacherous world of the thousands of workers who beat their way through infested swamps, lived in fragile tent cities on barges anchored in the midst of daunting stretches of ocean, and suffered from a remarkable succession of three ominous hurricanes that killed many and washed away vast stretches of track. Steadfast through every setback, Flagler inspired a loyalty in his workers so strong that even after a hurricane dislodged one of the railroad's massive pilings, casting doubt over the viability of the entire project, his engineers refused to be beaten. The question was no longer "Could it be done?" but "Can we make it to Key West on time?" to allow Flagler to ride the rails of his dream. Last Train to Paradise celebrates this crowning achievement of Gilded Age ambition, a sweeping tale of the powerful forces of human ingenuity colliding with the even greater forces of nature's wrath.From the Hardcover edition.
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1
Last train to paradise: Henry Flagler and the spectacular rise and fall of the railroad that crossed an ocean
2003, Thorndike Press
in English
0786249439 9780786249435
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2
Last Train to Paradise
2003, Crown Publishing Group
Electronic resource
in English
1400051185 9781400051182
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3
Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
September 24, 2002, Crown
in English
0609607480 9780609607480
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4
Last train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the building of the railroad that crossed the ocean
2002, Crown Publishers
in English
0609607480 9780609607480
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5
Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
September 24, 2002, Random House Audio
Audio CD
in English
- Abridged edition
0553756842 9780553756845
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Book Details
First Sentence
"At about four o'clock in the afternoon on Labor Day Saturday in 1935, Earnest Hemingway, by then one of Key West's most notable residents, thought it time to knock of work on weaving together what an editor had called "those Harry Morgan stories," an undertaking that would eventually be published as a novel titled To Have and Have Not."
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