"Miami" was originally spelled "Mayaimi."

Henry Flagler dreamed the impossible dream and actually got to live it, if only for a while. A founding partner of Standard Oil, Flagler amassed amazing wealth by 1885 when he decided to transform Florida from swampland into an American Riviera. Soon, his grand hotels dotted places like St. Augustine and West Palm Beach, and he built the Florida East Coast Railroad, which extended all the way down to the city that would become Miami.

But in 1898 Flagler wanted more. To fulfill his plans, he would have to further extend the railroad from Biscayne Bay to Key West, which was roughly 125 miles off the coast. That would require a miracle of engineering. It didn’t happen overnight, but in 1912 Flagler’s Florida Overseas Railroad was completed. The visionary didn’t have much time to bask in his success, however. Flagler died the following year at 83 years old, after a fall in his home. In 1935, a hurricane destroyed the Key West railroad, which was never rebuilt.

An excerpt from Lee Standiford’s Last Train to Paradise about the day the Florida Overseas Railroad opened:

“THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD, headlines now bannered, such epithets as ‘Flagler’s Folly’ long forgotten. He had arrayed before him thousands of grateful citizens, along with a multitude of foreign dignitaries and government officials come to pay homage to what had been accomplished solely because of his vision and his unswerving devotion to that objective. Few people in history have accomplished so great a task or lived to experience such a moment as Flagler did.

The man he hired to bring his dream to fruition had died on the job and hundreds of other men had lost their lives as well, and despite all bromides otherwise, some weight of their passing had to have rested upon Flagler’s shoulders. Storms weathered, court fights fought, political enemies bested, impossible engineering problems solved, good men buried, rails joined at last. So many currents, so many thoughts and notions to meld and comprehend, after eighty-two years of life.

There’s no way to fathom how much of this had passed through his mind that day, but on his way off the platform Flagler placed a hand on Parrott‘s shoulder and whispered, ‘Now I can die happy. My dream is fulfilled.'”