Henry Flagler’s Florida Keys Over-Sea Railroad ceased operating in 1935, but two Keys women vividly remember childhood experiences riding the “railroad that went to sea.”
Completed in 1912, it was called the Over-Sea Railroad because its track stretched more than 100 miles out into open water. For 23 years it carried passengers from mainland Florida to and through the Keys, affording them a breathtaking sense of steaming across the ocean.
Minnie Dameron, who spent much of her childhood on Plantation Key in the Upper Keys, remembers trips to visit family in Key West — and taking the train’s final journey just before portions of its track were irreparably damaged in a 1935 hurricane. Marie Gasser, who spent childhood summers in Ohio and winters in Miami, recalls her family’s one-way train trip from Miami to Key West. Dameron remembered her father flagging down the train at the Plantation Key freight station with a white handkerchief, and a lantern signaling the family had boarded.
“We’d get so excited when we knew we were coming to get the train and go all the way to Key West — we put on our best clothes,” said Dameron, 86, who now lives in Key West.
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