Before Flagler
The Forgotten Senator Who Helped Build Modern Florida
By the time Flagler began building down the east coast, Yulee’s railroad had already crossed the peninsula.
Ask most Floridians who built the state’s railroads and the answer comes quickly: Henry Flagler on the east coast, Henry Plant on the Gulf. David Levy Yulee rarely comes up. Yet by the time Flagler first visited Florida in 1878, Yulee had already served as the state’s first United States senator and had built the first railroad to cross the peninsula. His line was completed in 1861, about a quarter century before Flagler began assembling his east coast railway in the mid-1880s. It is a story rooted in two North Florida counties: Nassau, where the line began at Fernandina, and Levy, where it ended at Cedar Key.
From St. Thomas to the Frontier
David Levy was born in 1810 on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, the son of Moses Elias Levy, a Sephardic Jewish businessman who invested heavily in Florida land. David was educated in Virginia, joined his father’s frontier plantation near Micanopy as a teenager, and studied law in St. Augustine. From 1841 to 1845 he served as Florida’s non-voting territorial delegate to Congress.
Florida’s First Senator
When statehood came in 1845, the legislature elected him one of Florida’s first two United States senators. The Senate historical office identifies him as the first Jewish American to serve in that body. In 1846 the legislature, at his request, changed his name to David Levy Yulee. He lost a close 1851 re-election contest to Stephen R. Mallory, returned to the Senate in 1855, and served until 1861.
A Railroad Across the Peninsula
Shipping between the Gulf and the Atlantic then meant sailing around the peninsula through the Florida Straits, a passage of reefs and shoals. Yulee proposed to avoid it with a railroad from a deepwater port on the Atlantic to one on the Gulf. In 1853 the legislature chartered the Florida Railroad Company, with Yulee as president and chief stockholder, and he chose Fernandina and Cedar Key as the terminals.
Construction began at Fernandina in 1855, by most accounts. The Panic of 1857 pushed the company close to bankruptcy. The line reached Gainesville on February 1, 1859, and was completed to Cedar Key in March 1861 (sources differ on the exact day). A Florida historical marker describes the roughly 156-mile line as the longest railroad completed in Florida before the Civil War.
Who Built It
The Florida Railroad Museum describes the construction crews as made up mostly of enslaved people, with a small number of white laborers. They cleared forest and filled swamp by hand. The railroad remembered as Yulee’s achievement was built substantially by forced labor, and the people who built it received none of the credit.
Secession and Ruin
Yulee was a strong defender of slavery and a leading advocate of secession. After Florida seceded on January 10, 1861, he announced to the Senate on January 21 that he and Mallory were withdrawing to support the Confederacy. In 1863 he opposed a proposal from Governor John Milton to take iron rails from the Florida Railroad for Confederate use, and Yulee, as the company’s president, contested the demand (Florida Memory).
The war wrecked much of what he had built. Union naval forces raided Cedar Key in January 1862 and destroyed railroad equipment and buildings, and later destroyed about 30 miles of track. In May 1864 Union troops burned the main house at his Homosassa sugar plantation; the sugar mill, which they reportedly did not find, survives as a ruin in a state park.
Cotton Wood and Imprisonment
In late May 1865, Confederate guards escorting government papers and baggage that included Jefferson Davis’s personal effects reached Yulee’s plantation, Cotton Wood, near Archer. Yulee was not there. Accounts differ on whether treasury funds were also with the party. After the war Yulee was arrested at Gainesville (the exact date is unsettled) and held at Fort Pulaski, Georgia, for about nine months, according to secondary accounts.
A Divided Legacy
Yulee died in New York City on October 10, 1886, and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C. He was a leader in the statehood effort and the builder of a railroad that anticipated what Flagler and Plant later did on a larger scale. He was also a defender of slavery whose signature project depended on enslaved labor. Both things are true, and Florida’s history is better understood by holding them together.
Quick Facts
Born
1810, on St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, as David Levy
Territorial delegate
1841 to 1845 (non-voting seat in Congress)
U.S. Senate
1845 to 1851 and 1855 to 1861
Distinction
First Jewish American to serve in the U.S. Senate (Senate historical office)
Name change
Legislature changed it to David Levy Yulee in 1846
Railroad charter
Florida Railroad Company, chartered 1853, Yulee president
Route
Fernandina (Nassau County) to Cedar Key (Levy County), about 156 miles
Completed to Cedar Key
March 1861 (sources differ on the day)
Labor
Built mostly by enslaved workers (Florida Railroad Museum)
Died
October 10, 1886, New York City
Did You Know?
- Yulee’s railroad was completed about 25 years before Flagler began his east coast line.
- The Florida legislature changed his surname to Yulee in 1846.
- The ruins of his Homosassa sugar mill are now a Florida state park.
Vocabulary
Territorial delegate: a representative from a territory who may speak in Congress but cannot vote.
Secession: the formal withdrawal of a state from the Union.
Charter: an official grant of authority to create a company.
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Yulee’s name is less familiar today than Flagler’s or Plant’s?
2. How should a history of the Florida Railroad account for the people who built it?
Related Articles
- FLH-0106 — A Midnight Errand at Cotton Wood
- FLH-0097 — Florida During the Civil War
- FLH-0102 — Florida’s Blockade Runners
- FLH-0107 — Gamble Plantation
Sources
U.S. Senate. “Florida Senate Timeline: David Levy Yulee.” senate.gov
U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives. “YULEE, David Levy.” history.house.gov
Zerfas, Lewis L. “Rails through the Palmettos.” Florida Railroad Museum. frrm.org
Florida Memory. Milton–Yulee correspondence on removal of railroad iron, 1863. floridamemory.com
Florida Heritage Marker Program. “Florida’s First Cross-Peninsula Railroad.” markers.flheritage.com
Yulee, C. Wickliffe. “Senator David L. Yulee.” Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2 (cited via secondary description; not independently examined)
Florida State Parks. Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park. floridastateparks.org
________________
Copyright © 2026 Wm. E. McMullen II. All rights reserved. Published by Florida Learning Hub.