The Florida Keys are a series of small islands and “cays” stretching from just south of Miami all the way to Key West, bordered only by the ocean to the south and Florida Bay to the north.
In 1905, Henry Flagler, one of the three owners of Standard Oil (the biggest company in the world at the time) began building an “extension” of his railroad from Homestead to Key West which would span the breadth of the Keys, take more than ten years and $50 million dollars of Falgler’s money to complete and required 29 bridges and trestles be built in and over the water. With as many as 4000 men at work at any given time and at all points in the Keys, this project, given the means and methods of the time is unimaginable even today.