For Sale —American Paradise (8 page)

The reward for Desoto Tiger's killer was one of Fisher's earliest investments in Florida. Before he was finished, he would sink millions more into the community.

Fisher was a grade-
school dropout who had made a fortune by inventing the automobile headlight. He was also a founding partner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1911. In 1910 he bought a mansion on a stretch of Brickell Avenue overlooking Biscayne Bay that came to be known as “Millionaires' Row.”

Fisher bought the mansion sight unseen as a winter vacation home. He would become one of several powerful, wealthy men who became fascinated with Florida around the start of the second decade of the new century. These men—Fisher, William Jennings Bryan, Barron Collier, and others—would build on Henry Flagler's investment and lay the foundation for Florida's spectacular growth—and wild real estate speculation—a decade later.

Around the same time that Fisher agreed to offer a reward for the arrest of John Ashley, he met John Collins, who, at the age of seventy-
five, had bought
property on a swampy, mosquito-
infested barrier island about two and a half miles offshore. Collins called his island Ocean Beach, and he was trying to build a wooden bridge across Biscayne Bay to his property. But he'd run out of money.

Collins impressed Fisher, and he loaned Collins $50,000 to complete the bridge. Collins gave Fisher two hundred acres on his island.

Carl Fisher's wife Jane visited the island with her husband and saw a jungle swarming with mosquitoes. She had no idea why her husband wanted it.

But Fisher, like other dreamers who'd come to Florida before him, saw a paradise.

As Jane Fisher swatted mosquitoes, her husband stood in the middle of the swamp and told her that he was going to build a city here—“a city like magic,” she recalled, “like romantic places you read and dream about but never see.”

Jane Fisher said it was Carl's “greatest and craziest dream.” He was going to create Miami Beach.

Like Henry Flagler, Carl Fisher realized that his vision for his magic city could only be accomplished if more people came to Florida. But unlike Flagler, whose notion of transportation was the nineteenth-
century steam-powered passenger train, Fisher was plugged into the transportation of the future—the automobile. And before automobiles could bring hordes of newcomers to Florida, good roads would have to be built.

So Fisher became a driving force behind two major arteries that would open Florida to the automobile—the Dixie Highway, which ran from the Midwest to Miami, and the Lincoln Highway, which ran from San Francisco to New York City.

The bridge to John Collins's swampy island opened in June 1913—one month after Henry Flagler died after falling down a flight of stairs in his Palm Beach mansion. The bridge was billed as the longest wooden bridge in the world.

Fisher bought more land, hired a construction crew to clear away man-groves and build bulkheads, and started pumping sand from Biscayne Bay onto his property. In a few years he'd raised most of Ocean Beach to at least five feet above sea level. He planted grass and trees, built tennis courts and golf courses, and planned to turn the island into a sun-and-fun destination that catered to the wealthy. He was so determined that Ocean Beach be associated only with carefree fun that he forbade cemeteries on the island.

But in November 1913, just as Fisher was putting the finishing touches on Ocean Beach, his hopes of attracting tourists were dealt a serious blow when Dade County voters narrowly approved a referendum banning the sale of alcoholic beverages. The polls had scarcely closed, however, before bootleggers were doing a flourishing business.

If Fisher was upset by the vote, the referendum undoubtedly pleased his Brickell Avenue neighbor, William Jennings Bryan, a longtime and passionate
advocate of Prohibition. At the same time the bridge to Fisher's dream-
city-
to-be was being completed, workmen were putting the finishing touches on Bryan's new waterfront home overlooking Biscayne Bay. Bryan had decided to build a winter home in Florida for a now-familiar reason: He hoped the climate would improve his wife's fragile health.

Bryan first visited Miami on Christmas Day, 1909, when he delivered a speech that came to be known as “The Prince of Peace” lecture, in which he affirmed his faith in religion and disputed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Bryan visited Fort Myers and Miami in January 1912, and hinted that he and his wife were thinking about building a winter home in Miami. He took a quick look at the Everglades and made a boat trip across Lake Okeechobee. The farmer's son was impressed by the lake area's rich, dark soil.

“One could hardly believe that there was such an enormous wealth of soil undeveloped, and the area of it amazes me,” he told
Miami Daily Metropolis
. “I regard the reclamation of the Everglades as one of the greatest enterprises of its kind on record.”

He brought his wife to the village of Miami and Mary Bryan was charmed from the moment she stepped off the Florida East Coast Railway train in May 1912.

“As soon as I breathed the balmy air of Miami I knew this was the place, and began to investigate,” she later recalled.

The Bryans started work on their home on Brickell Avenue soon after he became secretary of state under President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Bryan rolled up his sleeves and helped the stonemasons build a garden wall on the property.

The
Miami Daily Metropolis
of April 11, 1913, described Bryan's new home overlooking Biscayne Bay as a “magnificent and stately structure” that had been designed by Mary to resemble “an old Spanish castle.”

Miami wasn't the only part of Florida that was getting the attention of wealthy, powerful men. In 1911, Barron Gift Collier, a high school dropout who'd become a millionaire by the age of twenty-six, visited Useppa Island, near Fort Myers on Florida's Gulf Coast. He liked it so much he bought it, and then he started buying more property, eventually creating his own empire on Florida's southwest coast.

By 1911, Miami had about six thousand residents, and apparently that was big enough for the federal government to decide to put a US Weather Bureau station there.

At the time, the Weather Bureau was a branch of the Department of Agriculture. The science of meteorology was in its infancy, and a college degree in the field was not required in order to be in charge of a Weather Bureau station. Station chiefs made observations on such things as wind speed and direction, temperatures and barometric pressure readings, forwarding the information on to Washington, DC.

All weather forecasts for all parts of the country came from Washington.

In early May 1911, Richard W. Gray arrived in Miami to be the first “official in charge” of the Weather Bureau station there. His qualifications for the post were meager—a high school diploma from Charlotte, North Carolina, and “various special courses” that included two years' study of mathematics and languages, according to Department of Agriculture inspection reports written a few years after Gray took the post.

Despite his sparse training in meteorology, Gray's abilities and efficiency were considered “excellent,” inspector H. C. Frankenfield wrote. But under “special qualifications” for the post, the inspector noted “None.”

Gray, thirty-six years old when he took the job, was “a tall, slender young man of pleasing personality and address,” Frankenfield noted. “His habits are good and his standing in the community is excellent. So far as is known he lives within his means, and he has no source of income other than his official salary.

“Mr. Gray appears to have read and studied extensively, and has passed all of the Weather Bureau examinations with high percentages,” Frankenfield wrote. “He is ambitious and energetic, and can do work of a better class than is required here. He likewise has confidence in his own abilities, and would be glad to change stations, if advanced in grade.”

Gray was “a good man,” Frankenfield concluded, although, at times, he could be “a trifle too loquacious.”

A month after Richard Gray had set up shop at Miami's new US Weather Bureau station, Solomon Merrick, the minister who had left behind New England's bitter winters for a sunny citrus farm in Florida, died after an extended illness. His son George, who'd been studying law at New York University, dropped out of school and came home to take over the family's citrus plantation.

George was an artistic young man who wrote poetry and had won a prize for one of his short stories. It occurred to him that maybe there was a better use for the farm than growing grapefruit. He started thinking about building a city—a beautiful, perfect city.

By late 1913, John Ashley had been away from Florida for two years. He'd spent some of that time working as a logger in the Pacific Northwest. He also claimed later that he'd crossed into Canada and robbed a bank.

He was getting homesick. Although there was the problem of the price on his head and the cops looking for him, he didn't care. He made his way back home to the family house at the edge of the Everglades.

Still, being a wanted man made him edgy.

On January 27, 1914, Floyd Chaffin, a civil engineer, was riding his motorcycle on a stretch of the Dixie Highway between Stuart and West Palm Beach. Near the little community of Fruita, John Ashley and his younger brother Bob suddenly stepped out of the thick vegetation that lined the highway, pointed guns at Chaffin, and ordered him to stop.

John Ashley aimed a shotgun at Chaffin, identified himself, and accused Chaffin of being a deputy sheriff sent to arrest him. He said he was going to kill all of the deputies in Palm Beach County. I'm a bad man, and I'm wanted all over the country, Ashley told Chaffin. Killing one more man won't make any difference to me.

Chaffin protested, telling the brothers that he was not a lawman. But it didn't matter to them. John Ashley hit the engineer with the butt of his shotgun several times, and then Bob pistol-
whipped him. But instead of killing Chaffin, they left him lying in the road, injured but alive.

After the attack on the engineer, every cop and sheriff in the area knew John Ashley was back. On February 21, Palm Beach County Sheriff George Baker sent two deputies, S. A. Barfield and Rob Hanlon, to arrest him. The deputies were walking along the Dixie Highway, looking for a break in the jungle-like undergrowth, when John Ashley and brother Bob appeared before them, guns drawn.

The brothers disarmed the deputies and told them to go back to West Palm Beach. But Ashley couldn't resist taunting the lawmen. Tell Sheriff Baker not to send any more “chicken-hearted men” after him, he said.

It was hard for the Ashley clan to understand why the law was going to so much trouble to arrest John. The dead man was a Seminole Indian. What was all the fuss about?

Finally, the family made a cynical calculation. John would turn himself in and stand trial for the murder of Desoto Tiger. The way the Ashleys figured, there weren't twelve men—women couldn't serve on juries at the time—in Palm Beach County who would convict an Ashley for shooting a Seminole. No one who was a friend of the family would vote for a conviction. And anyone who wasn't a friend knew they'd face the furious wrath of the clan if they voted to convict John Ashley of a crime that could send him to the gallows.

Ashley made arrangements through an attorney to surrender to Palm Beach County sheriff's deputies. He promised to behave himself under two conditions: He didn't have to submit to being handcuffed when he was moved from the jail to the courtroom during the trial, and his father could bring his supper every night to the Palm Beach County Jail. Sheriff Baker agreed, and Ashley turned himself in on April 27, 1914.

Ashley's trial began in West Palm Beach a couple of months later. The Ashleys' gamble was shrewd, but not quite shrewd enough. On July 1, the jury retired to deliberate. When they returned, they told the judge they were deadlocked. Nine of their twelve members had voted, as the Ashleys figured they would, for acquittal. But three had dared to vote to convict John Ashley of murder.

It wasn't quite enough to get John Ashley off the hook. He'd have to stand trial again. Still, he continued to behave as a model prisoner. And undoubtedly he still believed, with good reason, that there weren't twelve men in Palm Beach County who'd be crazy enough to convict him.