Actual construction of the road began in September, 1855. Fighting mosquitoes, sand gnats, wild animals, and disgruntled settlers, the crews, composed mostly of slaves with a small number of white laborers, hacked through the dense jungle growth and placed the rails mile after mile through lonely, desolate country. The first 10 miles took almost a year to build. By 1857 the track was completed as far west as Baldwin. When finished, it ran through 155.5 miles of wilderness and spanned marshes, creeks, rivers, and the ridge county of central Florida. By 1859, ships, some operating on a daily basis, traveled between Fernandina, Savannah, and Charleston. On March 1, 1861, the first train arrived in Cedar Key.

Six weeks later, on April 12, the Civil War began with the battle at Ft. Sumter. Earlier that year, on January 11, 1861, when it became evident that secession and war were inevitable, Yulee, while still a U.S. Senator, wrote to a friend, Joseph Finegan, urging the state to take over all forts and arsenals in Florida and proposing that a confederation of southern states be formed as soon as possible. In early February, Yulee departed Washington for Fernandina, his brilliant political career over.

On March 3, 1862, Yulee and his family were the last to leave Amelia Island. The USS Ottawa shelled the retreating train as it passed over the bridge to the mainland. Witnesses said that the Yulees waved their handkerchiefs at the pursuing Union forces.

During the war, Federals, believing Yulee to be at Margarita, burned the property to the ground. Fortunately, Yulee was in Gainesville, and his wife and children were visiting friends in Ocala. After the destruction of Margarita, the family moved farther inland to another Yulee holding in Archer:
Cotton Wood .

In May 1865, shortly after the end of the Civil War, David Yulee was taken into custody and charged with treason for the letter he wrote to Finegan. He served 10 months in prison at Ft. Pulaski, Georgia. Through the intervention of General Ulysses S. Grant, he was released in May 1866.

By 1869, the Florida Railroad was financially secure and fully reconstructed. By 1872, the Florida Railroad, known as The Atlantic, Gulf and West India Transit Company and familiarly known as “The Transit Road,” had successfully opened the interior of Florida to settlers, who by 1880 were shipping lumber, naval stores, and their crops of rice, cotton, fruit, and vegetables by rail to markets. One of the stops along the road, Arredondo, was called the “boss vegetable station.”

By 1880, Fernandina was at its zenith. Yulee was unaware that Henry Flagler had visited Jacksonville and would soon build his railroad down Florida’s east coast, with tourist hotels all along the way. Time would stand still for Yulee’s Fernandina. Situated on an island and isolated from the principal flow of traffic, it remained the beautiful, quiet little seaport. Cedar Key, the western terminus of the Florida Railroad, also remained a sleepy little fishing village as newer train routes were built to Tampa and points south by railroad magnate Henry Plant.

In July 1881, Yulee and his family left Fernandina for Washington, D.C. On March 16, 1885, Yulee’s beloved Nannie died suddenly, only two months after the completion of their mansion on Connecticut Avenue. Her son wrote that the central motive of his father’s life was gone. A year and seven months later, David Yulee contracted a severe cold while visiting his grandchildren in Bar Harbor, Maine. On his return trip to Washington, he succumbed to pneumonia in the Clarendon Hotel, New York, on October 10, 1886. A prominent New Yorker said that Senator Yulee was “the greatest man Florida ever produced, and his life has been an inspiration to some who could appreciate his greatness.”

Uniting the Two Seas

The implications of David Yulee's desire for "uniting" the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico have seldom been explored, but are, nevertheless, crucial to any basic understanding of the Florida Railroad.

If Yulee's pre-Civil War horizons had been limited to the largely uninhabited East Florida peninsula, the railroad would never have recovered its own costs, let alone make a profit. Yulee would not have succeeded in interesting the likes of prominent Wall Street investors in such a scheme. But this certainly was not the case. Yulee's dramatic concept of "uniting the two seas" was the basis of an innovative plan that would allow shipping to bypass the hazardous Florida Straits, a region where accidents caused millions of dollars in losses annually. Freight would be transferred from ships and placed on rails at either terminus: Cedar Key on the Gulf or Fernandina on the Atlantic. Rather than navigate the Straits and expose themselves to high risk, merchants would be assured of safe delivery, as well as saving about three days of travel time in the process. The U.S. Post Office was so enamored with the idea that it was prepared to spend $500,000 per year for the services of the Florida Railroad.

The concept bore a strong resemblance to the 1820s cross-state canal proposal. Prominent commentators, such as the journalist Henry V. Poor, predicted that the impact on trade and commerce would equal that of the Erie Canal. "Its opening," Poor believed, "will be the great commercial event of the day." David Yulee envisioned the 155 mile railway as an "extended wharf" between two oceans: in essence, America's first interoceanic railroad. "Once constructed," he claimed, "Florida, from being isolated, will become a central point in the thoroughfare of trade and travel; and a new stream of population and wealth will swell the tide of our then rapid course to maturity."

The very name of the Florida Railroad was something of a misnomer because it was initially designed as an international transit company, complete with its own connecting steamship lines. In fact, Yulee had hoped to raise an additional $10 million in order to purchase a fleet of ships that would traverse the Atlantic and Gulf, connecting cities as diverse as New Orleans, Havana, New York City, and Liverpool directly to Florida. When the railroad was completed in 1861, however, Florida's entry into the newly formed Confederate States of America and the outbreak of the Civil War ended all prospects of establishing the state as a hub for international commerce. The railroad's post-bellum character was drastically different from the former senator's original ambitions. For a multitude of reasons, the road became an important regional carrier and sparked the development of numerous towns along its path, but failed to accomplish Yulee's more grandiose ambitions.

Therefore, in remembering David Yulee's railroad legacy, one must not forget his dream of "uniting the two seas," for without this initial quest, North Central Florida would have had to wait several more decades before local commerce could have possibly justified the massive investment required for building a railroad.
— Chris Monaco

A Glimpse of Train Travel across Florida in 1869

What could the traveler who boarded the Florida Railroad at the station in Fernandina bound for Cedar Key expect in 1869? For his $11 fare, he would be embarking on a 12-hour journey across a mostly uninhabited landscape, over a rough roadbed that crossed marshes and swamps, through the wild heart of Florida, from the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf of Mexico.

The train headed south from Fernandina, crossing the trestle over the water that separated Amelia Island from the mainland, then turned westward through mile after mile of pine woods to the first stop at Callahan, 27 miles from Fernandina.

The next station was at Baldwin, a busy railroad junction, where the tracks of the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad linking Jacksonville and Pensacola crossed those of the Florida Railroad. Travelers who needed to change trains or wait for connections could stay overnight at the Florida House.

After leaving Baldwin, the Florida Railroad line pressed on 17 miles to the next station at Trail Ridge. For the next 22 miles, the scenery varied between dense forests and swampy lands until the train crossed the bridge over the Santa Fe River and rumbled into Waldo for a brief stop to take on water and fuel.

The largest inland town, Gainesville, was just 12 miles farther along the track, which passed over ponds and streams and through the fertile lowlands. With a population of 1,500, Gainesville could offer the exhausted traveler a choice of three hotels, The Exchange, The Magnolia, and the Beville House, each charging about $2.50 per day.

Leaving Gainesville, the train pressed on through high, rolling land and forests of pine, oak, and hickory, before pulling into the next station at Archer, 15 miles to the west. Archer had just one hotel, which charged $3.00 per room per day.

If the track was in fairly good condition and no accidents occurred, the engine’s progress through woodland hammocks and cypress lowlands was steady over the next 22 miles of track to the next station in Otter Creek.

With the sun low on the western horizon, the passengers reached their final destination. The scenery changed as they approached the coastal marshes and crossed a string of small coastal islands to the western edge of Florida and the terminus of the Florida Railroad at the Cedar Keys, a small seaport with about 400 residents.

Mr. Willard provided guest rooms at $3.00 per day for those wishing to take in a little sightseeing, hunting or fishing. For those train passengers who planned to continue their journey by sea, there was a choice of ships bound for Key West or Havana to the south, or across the Gulf of Mexico to Pensacola or New Orleans.

What Did the Florida Railroad Mean to Local Families?

Haile Family Homestead

Thomas and Serena Haile moved into a new home a few miles west of Gainesville about the time that tracks for David Yulee’s Florida Railroad were being laid near their place. They had come to this new frontier from Camden, South Carolina, in 1854 with their four children and about 64 slaves to establish a cotton plantation, which they named Kanapaha. It is very likely that they chose the land they did because of the railroad, the importance of which is woven throughout Serena Haile’s Journal.

We learn from her journal entries in the 1880s that three of her sons worked on the railroad and that she often went down to the depot at Arredondo for short visits with them as they stopped on their trips between Gainesville and Cedar Key. She hoped always to find a letter or a card waiting for her in the mailbags dropped off at the station and would use the train to go into Gainesville to visit friends and family who lived in the city.

Mrs. Haile, probably anxious about her sons’ welfare, kept careful track of the many train disasters and wrecks. “Terrible accident on RailRoad night of 30th Aug.,” she reported, and, when Yellow Fever spread from Jacksonville, “Train not allowed to stop in G(ainesville).” When her son George came down with fever in Belleview (south of Ocala), she traveled by train to nurse him back to health.

Like all farming families along the line, the Hailes depended on the railroad (which ran parallel to present-day Archer Road) to take their crops to market (“sent 14 boxes Oranges to Baltimore”) and to bring them supplies (“Fish & Oysters for Dinner by Freight”).

A visit to the Historic Haile Homestead on Archer Road reveals not only Mrs. Haile’s view of her world as expressed in her journal, but the “talking walls” of the house where she penciled in her grocery lists, home remedies, and names of her visitors. Serena and her children had the unusual habit of writing on the walls in every room of their house, a practice that was carried on by several generations of the family, who recorded the names of their party guests, penned poems and rhymes, and even drew sketches on the white plaster surfaces. These notes and sketches have been preserved for visitors to enjoy.

For more information, go to: http://www.hailehomestead.org/ .

The Matheson House: Railroads, Romance, Religion, and Commerce

Would the pretty girl named Augusta Florida Steele, born and raised in the Cedar Keys, have met the dashing young Confederate veteran James Douglas Matheson, recently arrived in Gainesville to begin his career as a merchant, without the Florida Railroad? Was it the Reverend William McCormick, the Presbyterian minister who traveled by train from Gainesville to Arredondo to Cedar Key to preach to his far-flung congregation, who served as a matchmaker? Those are questions to ponder as you visit the historic Matheson House in downtown Gainesville, where the young couple took up housekeeping after they married in 1867. Gussie and Jimmy settled down to life in town, raising a family and enjoying frequent visits from out-of-town relatives who would arrive by train at the station about eight blocks south of their house. When Jimmy established his own store across the street from the new Alachua County courthouse, he traveled to New York to buy merchandise. Sometimes Gussie went with him, marveling at the tall buildings and busy streets in the big city. Back at home in Gainesville, she records in her diary that they will dine on fresh oysters sent by express train from Cedar Key.

Dudley Farm Historic State Park: What Happened to the Settlements Bypassed by the Railroads?

Take a step back in time at the Dudley Farm Historic State Park, and see what happened to the settlements bypassed by the railroad lines that snaked their way over the landscape in the mid- to late-1880s. The town of Dudley appears prominently on a map published in 1880, and Mr. P. B. Dudley's store served as the local post office for the scattered families living due west of Gainesville, but miles north of the tracks of the Florida Railroad leading to Cedar Key. Today we can thank this factor for the preservation of the 325-acre Dudley family farm, complete with 18 historic structures, including Mr. Dudley's store with a tiny post office desk tucked into one corner. If train tracks had been laid down the old crossroads that pass close to the Dudley farm, you can bet that the original farm buildings, fields, and pastures would not have survived intact for us to enjoy this living history treasure with its seasonal plowing days, cane grindings, quilting bees, and harvest celebrations.

African-Americans and the Railroad

Most of the labor to clear the land, build bridges, and lay the first railroad tracks in Florida fell on the shoulders of African-American men. Some were undoubtedly slaves during the pre-Civil War era, and after that some of the work was done by prisoners, hired by the railroads from the State for a specific length of time. After the tracks were laid and the trains were running on schedule, gangs of railroad workers maintained section after section of track, repairing damage, maintaining tracks, clearing trees blown down in storms, rebuilding road beds that flooded or washed out. They were known as Gandy Dancers, named for the Gandy Company, which manufactured many of the tools they used, and for the rhythmic songs and chants they used to pace their work. These men, usually a captain and eight men, were housed in section houses placed at eight- to ten-mile intervals along the routes. In addition to these jobs, African-Americans worked in repair shops, such as the large works in High Springs, or as cooks and porters on the trains. They also loaded and unloaded freight and baggage in towns and villages along the routes. The railroads provided a steady paycheck to many African-American families. A landmark in the American Labor Movement was the first union that Black workers formed, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, led by a Floridian, A. Philip Randolph, who grew up in nearby Putnam County.

In Gainesville and throughout the South, the tradition of separate waiting rooms and cars for African-Americans was firmly established, but the railroads provided African-Americans a new sense of freedom and mobility, too. Church choirs, baseball teams, and Sunday School classes could travel to near and distant places to join other communities and meet friends and relatives. Many Black families bid farewell to their young men and women at railroad stations as they headed for a better life “up North.”

- compiled by Murray Laurie

Cotton Wood Plantation

The following information was given by Dollie Nattiel, who, along with her mother, had been a slave of David Yulee. Dollie was born on Yulee’s sugar plantation in Homosassa sometime in 1855. When she was nine or ten years old, she moved with her mother and siblings to Cotton Wood Plantation in Archer, FL. [The location can now be described as NE of 27/41 and NW of Archer Rd (24).]

She described the place as follows: The house was located on a hill about one mile north of town. It was a two-story house, weather boarded, with a gable type roof. It was facing the east and had a chimney at the north end, with one fireplace upstairs and another one downstairs. The main body of the house consisted of eight rooms, with a front porch downstairs facing east. The northwest room was the dining room. There was a kitchen built off from this room with an open space between the kitchen and the dining room. The house was painted white and had green shutters on the windows. On the west and north of the house, Dollie said there were slave quarters: two long lines of shanties, but she did not know how many.

On the east side of the house, about one half mile or less, Mr. Yulee had a sawmill, and she remembers well playing in the sawdust pile with other children on Sunday afternoons.

Mr. Yulee, she claims, had four children at the time he lived there, not knowing how long that was: a boy named Charlie and three girls: Margaret, Florida and Mamie. Dollie said Mr. Yulee did not visit the place very often. Sometimes he would be gone two or three months. She says she remembers a lot of times Mr. Yulee would arrive by train to Archer and walk home.

Mr. Yulee was very strict with his slaves. They had to keep themselves clean and looking good. Their quarters had to be kept looking nice. The overseer would blow a horn sometimes. At other times, he would blow a bugle, which Dollie said she loved to hear. He would blow one or the other before daylight for the slaves to get up by. She remembered one overseer by the name of Mr. Claredy. She states that her mother told her if the overseer was not satisfactory, Mr. Yulee would discharge him by sending another with a letter of discharge to take his place. She said that her mother cooked for the family part of the time and that sometimes she waited on the table. But her principal job was keeping the blackbirds scared out of the fields, using ten or fifteen other young slaves to do it.

Dollie stated that a doctor by the name of Carew occupied the home some years after her freedom . She said Mr. Yulee gave most of his old slaves forty acres of land near Archer. She does not remember what became of the Yulee home - whether it burned or was torn down - as her mother moved away from the plantation after her freedom.

Historic Marker

A Glimpse of Train Travel across Florida in 1869

On March 7, 2004, a State of Florida historic marker commemorating the history of railroads in Gainesville was dedicated on NW Sixth Street next to the Santa Fe Community College Downtown Campus. The Blount Center, 401 NW 6th St, was the site of the last of Gainesville’s three depots. Following is the text of the marker.

Gainesville’s Railroads

The coming of the Florida Railroad opened up the interior of Florida for both settlement and trading and helped establish Gainesville. On February 1, 1859 the Florida Railroad entered town and connected Fernandina Beach with Cedar Key by 1861. Built from the northeast along what is now Waldo Road, the rails crossed 13th Street at Archer Road, and continued southwest along Archer Road to Cedar Key. The 19th century Florida roads were sandy, swampy and nearly impassible, so early rail access to two ports dramatically increased Gainesville's prosperity. Railroads provided transportation for outgoing agricultural products and brought in the region's first tourists, creating a demand for hotels, restaurants and other services. As the demand for North Central Florida agriculture grew at the turn of the 20th century, more railroads crisscrossed the region. The last railroad passenger service in Gainesville ended in 1971. The Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) Railroad built a modern depot in 1948, rerouting its trains from Main Street downtown to tracks on Northwest 6th Street. The ACL depot is presently part of the downtown campus of Santa Fe Community College.

Past Railroads of Gainesville

Gainesville's first railroad, the Florida Railroad, was started in 1859. In 1881, the Florida Southern Railroad reached town from Palatka, Hawthorne and Rochelle, entering at South Main Street from Hawthorne Road and running the length of Main Street to 8th Avenue. A route from Rochelle provided service to Ocala. Three years later, the Savannah, Florida & Western Railroad linked to these tracks, providing service through Alachua to Waycross, Georgia. The two lines merged in 1902, becoming the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, providing service from Tampa Bay to New York. ACL trains ran in the middle of Main Street stopping for passengers to use the city's hotels. In 1895, the Gainesville and Gulf Railroad built a line to Micanopy along NW 6th Street. By 1899, the rails reached south past Fairfield to Emathala and north to Sampson City. The Gainesville and Gulf was sold in 1906 and renamed the Tampa and Jacksonville, or T & J. In 1900, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL) was established and acquired the old Florida Railroad right-of-way through Gainesville. When the SAL bought the T & J in 1926, it was renamed the Jacksonville, Gainesville & Gulf. This line was abandoned in 1943.

Further Reading

The following list of books of interest to railroad enthusiasts is provided by railroad historian and member of the Alachua County Historical Commission Harold R. McGee. They may be found at the Alachua County Library at:   http://www.acld.lib.fl.us/

Addendum to the Story of Florida’s Railroads, Bulletin 88, Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, 1953

American Heritage History of Railroading in America, Oliver Jensen, 1975

American Locomotives 1900-1950, Edwin P. Alexander, 1990

American Railroad Freight Car, The, John H. White, Jr., 1993

Atlantic Coast Line Passenger Service: The Post War Years, Larry Goolsby, 1999

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad “Public Timetables,” 1903-1967

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad: Steam Locomotives, Ships, and History, Richard E. Prince, Indiana University Press Edition, 2000

By Streamliner New York to Florida, Joseph E. Welch, 1993

Down at the Depot 1831-1920, Edwin P. Alexander, 1970

Florida’s Eden: An Illustrated History of Alachua County, John B. Pickard, 1994

Guide to North America Steam Locomotives, Trains Magazine, compiled by George H. Drury, 1997

History of the American Locomotive1830-1880, John H. White, Jr., 1968

History of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, Edward Dozier Douglas, Ph.D., 1920

History of Gainesville, Florida, 1854-1979, Charles H. Hildreth, Ph.D., and Merlin G. Cox, Ph.D., 1981

The History of Micanopy Florida, Caroline Barr Watkins, 1975

Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene, John R. Stilgoe, 1983

Operating Rules, Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company, 1922

Railroad, The: The Nations First Big Business, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., 1965

Railroad Caboose, The: Its 100 Year History, Legend, and Lore, William F. Knapke with Freeman Hubbare

Railroad Construction, Walter Loring Webb, CE, 7th Edition, 1922

Rails ‘Neath the Palms, Robert W. Mann, 1983

Rules and Regulations, Seaboard Air Line Railway Company, 1924

Seaboard Air Line Railroad “Public Timetables,” 1903-1967

Seaboard Air Line Railway: Steamboats, Locomotives and History, Richard E. Prince, Indiana University Press Edition, 1966, Reprinted 2000

Story of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad 1830-1930, The, Charles Kernan, 1990

Story of Florida’s Railroads, The, Bulletin 86, Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, 1952

Through the Heart of the South: The Seaboard Air Line Railroad Story, Robert Wayne Johnson, 1995

Yonder Comes the Train, Lance Phillips, 1965

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