The railroad reaches Eau Gallie and Melbourne, 1893

Henry Flagler’s railway reached the Melbourne area in 1893, Eau Gallie first. According to the marker at Highland Avenue and St. Clair Street in Eau Gallie, the line “arrived in Eau Gallie on May 20, 1893” and the first engine arrived on June 24, 1893. A ticket from Jacksonville to Eau Gallie cost $7.

Gleason’s bargain

Eau Gallie had worked for it. The National Register nomination for William H. Gleason’s house says that in 1887 Gleason, the town’s founder, offered Flagler right-of-way and several hundred town lots to persuade him that Eau Gallie would be a good place for a station on the line south.

End of the line

For a while Eau Gallie was the end of track. The marker says it was the terminus while construction continued south. A “Y” was built downtown so trains could turn around and head back north, and a spur ran down to the Indian River, where the library and city park are now. Freight went from the trains onto steamboats for the trip south for three years, which, the marker says, set off a short-lived land boom in Eau Gallie. Behind the Ginter building on St. Clair Street, at 1540 Highland Avenue, a cut for the railway was later filled in.

Melbourne

The tracks reached Melbourne “just months later,” according to the 2016 National Register nomination for Melbourne’s Green Gables, and went on to Miami in 1896 and Key West in 1912. The railroad, that nomination says, brought tourists and settlers and let produce and timber reach markets out of state. In Eau Gallie, the Gleason nomination adds, it made it possible to ship citrus and fish, packed in ice, to northern markets.

The same line reached Titusville in January 1893; the county-wide story is on Old Space Coast’s railroad page.

Further Reading

• Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron by Edward N. Akin