96 years later and so littles changed. (A tidbit I found doing research) Wesley Stout in the Ft. Lauderdale News wrote this during the 1960’s: Florida in 1917 boasted of a Dixie Hwy, completed from the Georgia Line to Miami. That is to say, it was passable, and the motorist than asked no more. The one remaining hurdle was at Stuart, where a ferry flat moved four cars at a time over the St. Lucie River. There the motorist might be stalled four hours, longer if the flat got stuck on a sandbar. But a mighty bridge was building, opened to traffic in January 1918. At the dedication, the principle speaker was Judge C.C. Chillingsworth.… With his tongue partly in his cheek, he described Stuart, “… We got our mail at Sewall’s point three times a week, provided the Indian River Steamer didn’t get stuck on a bar. And let me tell you my friends, we were perfectly contented. Civilization had not yet been sadly inflicted upon us. Automobiles, aeroplanes, woman’s suffrage, prohibition, short skirts and the most delightfully civilized methods of slaughtering our fellow man by the millions lay in the future. “But, alas, in the same year of 1892, one Henry M. Flagler, seeing our delectable arcadia, our blissful solitude, our heavenly seclusion, began making plans to impose civilization upon us. He was a man of big heart and grand vision, but we oldtimers have not forgiven him yet. His railroad reached Palm Beach I the spring of 1895. Since that fateful day, we have been cursed with lawyers, politicians, preachers, pestilence and war.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 20:34:11 +0000
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