Transportation & Trails · FLH-0122

The Railroad That Almost Changed America

Florida’s Ambitious Plan for a Cross-Peninsula Railroad

A railroad finished in the spring of 1861 had very little time to show what it could do.

In the 1850s, a Florida senator set out to solve a shipping problem by building a single railroad across the northern peninsula. David Levy Yulee’s Florida Railroad ran from Fernandina in Nassau County on the Atlantic to Cedar Key in Levy County on the Gulf of Mexico, and it was completed in the spring of 1861, only weeks before the Civil War began. This account keeps two things apart: the documented story of what the line was built to do, who built it and what the war did to it, and one short section, clearly labeled, of speculation.

The Problem

In the 1850s a ship carrying cargo between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard generally had to sail around the peninsula and through the Straits of Florida, a passage of reefs and shoals. The Florida Railroad Museum states that annual ship losses there “reached millions of dollars”; no contemporary figure behind that statement was located, so it should be read as the museum’s summary rather than a measured total.

The Plan

The concept was straightforward: a ship would unload at Fernandina, a train would carry the cargo about 156 miles to Cedar Key, and a different ship would carry it on. Secondary summaries report that backers claimed the route would cut about 800 miles and about three days from the trip. These were projections about a railroad that had not yet run. An abstract of Dudley S. Johnson’s article in the Florida Historical Quarterly reports that Yulee planned a steamship line from Cedar Key to Gulf ports, Central America and the Caribbean, and hoped to attract immigrant vegetable growers whose produce would travel by rail to Fernandina and then by steamer to northern markets.

Who Built It

Yulee was a United States senator, president and chief stockholder of the Florida Railroad Company, a slaveholder and a leading defender of slavery in the Senate. The company was incorporated on January 8, 1853, according to a 1961 state marker. The Florida Railroad Museum describes the construction crews as mostly enslaved people with a small number of white laborers. They had no choice in the matter and received none of the credit later given to the man remembered as the builder. The Panic of 1857 reportedly left the company near bankruptcy.

Completion and War

A 2017 Florida marker says the line was completed to Cedar Key in March 1861 and describes the roughly 156-mile railroad as the longest in Florida before the Civil War. Sources differ on the day. Florida seceded on January 10, 1861, Yulee announced his withdrawal from the U.S. Senate on January 21, and Fort Sumter was fired on April 12. In January 1862 a Union naval force raided Cedar Key, and the marker says the USS Hatteras destroyed the depot, freight cars and other buildings. In 1864 Confederate authorities took up rails to build a connecting line in North Florida, after a dispute with Yulee.

A Labeled Exercise in Speculation

Everything in this section is speculation, not history. Historians call it counterfactual reasoning, and the record cannot answer these questions. Suppose the railroad had had a longer peacetime run. The documented record offers only a plan, Yulee’s steamship line, unmeasured projections of savings, and a company already strained financially before completion. The railroad also rested on the same system of slavery that built it. Whether Cedar Key and Fernandina would have developed differently is unknown, and no claim is made.

What Actually Happened

The railroad did not return to its prewar role. A secondary summary says the company defaulted on its bonds to the Internal Improvement Fund in 1866 and was sold at auction, and that the line was reorganized in 1872 as the Atlantic, Gulf and West India Transit Company and in 1881 as the Florida Transit Company. Other builders, including Henry Flagler and Henry Plant, later connected other parts of Florida.

Quick Facts

The problem

Ships sailed around the peninsula through the Straits of Florida

Route

Fernandina to Cedar Key, about 156 miles

Incorporated

January 8, 1853 (1961 state marker)

Completed

March 1861 (sources differ on the day)

Projected saving

About 800 miles and three days, per secondary sources (projection)

Labor

Mostly enslaved workers (Florida Railroad Museum)

Distinction

Longest railroad in Florida before the Civil War (state marker)

Cedar Key raid

January 1862, USS Hatteras (state marker)

Sold

1866, after default on Internal Improvement Fund bonds

Did You Know?

* The line was finished only weeks before the Civil War began.

* Backers’ claimed savings of about 800 miles were projections, not measured results.

* The speculation section of this account is labeled because the record cannot answer what might have been.

Vocabulary

Counterfactual: an imagined alternative to what actually happened.

Terminus: the end point of a railroad line.

Impressment: the taking of property for government use.

Discussion Questions

1. Why is it important to separate documented history from speculation?

2. How does the question of who built the railroad change how its story is told?

* FLH-0108 — Before Flagler: The Forgotten Senator Who Helped Build Modern Florida

* FLH-0123 — The War That Broke Florida’s Railroad

* FLH-0106 — A Midnight Errand at Cotton Wood

* FLH-0097 — Florida During the Civil War

Sources

Zerfas, Lewis L. “Rails through the Palmettos.” Florida Railroad Museum. frrm.org (museum publication; secondary)

Florida Heritage Marker Program. “Florida’s First Cross-Peninsula Railroad” (2017) and “Florida’s First Atlantic to Gulf Railroad” (1961). markers.flheritage.com

Johnson, Dudley S. “The Florida Railroad after the Civil War.” Florida Historical Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1968) (abstract only examined)

Florida Memory, State Archives of Florida. “Florida Railroads and the Civil War.” floridamemory.com

Turner, Gregg. A Short History of Florida Railroads. Arcadia, 2003 (cited via secondary description; not independently examined)

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