Page 200 - John Anderson

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honor, persuading them to use an old Indian name, "Miami." In 1897,
Flagler opened the exclusive Royal Palm Hotel in Miami.
Flagler's second wife, Ida Alice, had been institutionalized for mental
illness since 1895. In 1901, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that
made incurable insanity grounds for divorce, opening the way for
Flagler to remarry. On August 24, 1901, Flagler married Mary Lily
Kenan and the couple soon moved into their Palm Beach estate,
Whitehall.

By 1905, Flagler decided that his Florida East Coast Railway should
be extended from Biscayne Bay to Key West, a point 128 miles past
the end of the Florida peninsula. At the time, Key West was Florida's
most populated city and it was also the United States' closest deep
water port to the canal that the U.S. government proposed to build in
Panama. Flagler wanted to take advantage of additional trade with
Cuba and Latin America as well as the increased trade with the west
that the Panama Canal would bring. In 1912, the Florida Over-Sea
Railroad was completed to Key West.

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