The Final Run of Flagler's Folly

The Eighth Wonder of the World

De: David Siracusa

Narrado por: David F Siracusa

Duración: 5 h y 10 m

Resumen del Editor

In 1877, as Henry Flagler, the great tycoon of the oil business, sat pondering the tenuous health of his ill wife, he never could have imagined the amazing adventure that this life-changing moment would eventually lead to. One day soon, he would set out to create the Eighth Wonder of the World. A feat that no other man would consider and that perhaps no other man of his day would have had the means or the fortitude to accomplish. And yet, even the greatness of Henry Flagler's most ambitious accomplishment would easily be swept aside in the face of Mother Nature's fury.

Common everyday people were the unlucky and unwilling key participants in this disastrous catastrophe in 1935, as one of the United States' worst hurricanes ever devoted all of its attention and wrath to the tiny, beautiful, little islands of the Keys. High school kids out for a good time, families traveling along the rails hoping to celebrate a long Labor Day Weekend, workers on the rail taking a break from their unending labors, people working the sea for a living, heroic would-be rescuers, and more. All of these innocent, unsuspecting people were in for the most terrifying event of their lives. If they could just survive.

The result of the Labor Day Hurricane's anger would leave a path of destruction, devastation, and death that was not to be equaled for many years. The tail of how Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad and Mother Nature clashed in 1935, forever altering the history of the Florida Keys, is not only terrifying and horrendous, but at the same time also astounding and entertaining!

©2019 David F Siracusa (P)2021 David F Siracusa

Great story

As a South FL history nerd I thought this story was great and well told.