Flagler’s bridge

As we sailed towards the passageway between two keys so as to go from Florida Bay into the Gulf of Mexico we came upon this. It is the remains of the “eight wonder of the world”… Flagler’s overseas railroad.
Flagler was co-founder of standard oil company back in the late 1800’s.
After leaving Standard Oil he saw opportunity in the State of Florida so, he pushed his railroad line south along the east coast of Florida and built several great hotels along the way. this is a postcard from 1909 of his resort in Saint Augustine.

With the coming opening of the Panama Canal Flagler decided that if he could developed the southernmost deep water port in the USA he would capture the freight traffic that the canal would bring. Key West was the best port meeting these requirements but it was over 100 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico and would require the construction of a series of bridges connecting the islands of the Keys together. The longest of these would have to stretch 7 miles! Over the course of years he constructed this “eighth wonder of the world”… an overseas railroad that could withstand the great storms of the region. Many of the bridges that he built were fashioned after the Roman viaducts, simple concrete arches stretching for miles between the islands of the keys. Here's how they were constructed.First the cofferdams and support posts were driven into the limestone and the foundations were poured.
Then the support collums were poured.
Finally the arches were constructed and concrete poured.
During this time period a new product came on the market; low cost, mass produced steel. He used this to create steel span bridges where the waters were deeper as a method to save money and time.

The final product.
This great project never realized his dream of opening up a great southern deep water port. Freighters merely continued up the eastern seacoast to deliver their cargo nearer to its final destination but he did open up all of southern Florida to the emerging population of the USA. http://www.floridakeys.com/overseashighway.htm

As the years went by, the railroad went bankrupt and the State of Florida took over the right-of-way and rebuilt the bridges to accommodate cars instead of rail traffic.(Notic the original "box" style of construction of the steel spans.
To convert the railroad bridges into car bridges they layed steel beams across the spans and placed concrete slabs 22 feet wide on top of them.(biking out to Pigon Key on the old steel span bridge)
They used the railroad tracks as the guard rails on this new road.

Now, all of the old bridges are replaced with modern bridges and all that remains are the great “roman viaduct” style bridges and some of the steel span bridges which are used as fishing piers.

This last weekend they celebrated the 100th anniversary of the opening of the “Overseas” railway with an open house on the museum island of Pigeon Key. Flagler used this island as his work camp and it held up to 500 workers at a time during the years of construction.