Plant system
The Plant System was a network of rail and steamship lines in the southern states of the USA , which at the end of the 19th century first extended over parts of Georgia and later mainly over large parts of Florida . The network was named after its owner, the railroad magnate Henry Bradley Plant .
history
The formation of the Savannah, Florida and Western Railway
The rail corridor, which would later become the heart of Henry Plant's rail network, extends in Georgia from Savannah to the southwest and west via Waycross and Du Pont to Thomasville .
On December 25, 1847, the Savannah and Albany Railroad was founded, which was originally supposed to connect Savannah with Albany . The company was renamed Savannah, Albany and Gulf Railroad (SA&G) in 1853 and opened a railway line from Savannah to Screven in 1858 , but plans to continue to Albany were not carried out.
A second rail company, the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad (A&G), was established in December 1856. She owned the route usage rights of SA&G and extended the route in April 1859 from Screven to Blackshear and in October of that year to Homerville . Valdosta and Thomasville were reached in the course of 1860. The further expansion of the route was stopped for the time being with the outbreak of the Civil War . In May 1863, SA&G was integrated into A&G, which now owned the entire route from Savannah to Thomasville.
Towards the end of the war, the A&G built a branch from Du Pont to the state border with Florida , where the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad (P&G) continued to Live Oak . After the war, A&G took over the entire route from Du Pont to Live Oak. In 1867 the main line of the A&G was extended from Thomasville west to Bainbridge . Another branch was opened from Thomasville via Pelham and Camilla (1869) to Albany (1870).
In December 1875 a connection to the railway line of the Charleston and Savannah Railway (C&S) was created in Savannah, which connects Savannah with Charleston in South Carolina since 1860 . After the bankruptcy of C&S, Henry Plant integrated them into A&G on November 4, 1879 and renamed the company Savannah, Florida and Western Railway (SF&W) from December 9 of that year . In 1882 Plant founded the Plant Investment Company , the first subsidiary of which was SF&W and with which he promoted the purchase and expansion of additional railway lines from now on.
Further expansion
In 1881 the Waycross Shortline from Waycross to Jacksonville ( Florida ) was opened. It consists of the subsidiaries Waycross and Florida Railroad (section in Georgia) and East Florida Railroad (section in Florida) founded by Plant in the previous year . Another branch off the main line of the SF&W was built in 1882 from Climax (east of Bainbridge) to Chattahoochee .
The first major railroad construction in Florida by Henry Plant took place from 1880 to 1884 gradually through the South Florida Railroad from Sanford via Orlando to Tampa . A connection to the rest of the rail network was established between Jacksonville and Sanford with steamboats across the St. Johns River . In 1886, all of the Plant System railway lines were converted to standard gauge .
In 1884 Plant took over the Live Oak and Rowland's Bluff Railroad , which was not founded until 1881. The railroad ran from Live Oak to Gainesville (with a branch to Lake City ). In 1887, the SF&W opened a railway line from Ocala to Dunnellon . An extension to Homosassa followed in 1888 and another branch to Inverness in 1891 . In 1892 the Florida Southern Railway was taken over , the plant reorganized and renamed Florida Southern Railroad . The line ran from Gainesville via Ocala to Punta Gorda and crossed the South Florida Railroad (Sanford - Tampa) at Lakeland . In 1893 the Tampa and Thonotosassa Railroad was founded , which ran from Tampa to Thonotosassa .
In 1895 the purchase of the Sanford and St. Petersburg Railroad (completed in 1888 as the Orange Belt Railway ), which led from Sanford to Saint Petersburg . In the following year, the Florida Midland Railway was integrated. The line ran from the shores of Lake Jesup first to Apopka in the west and then turned to Kissimmee in the south. The crossing point with the Orange Belt Railway was in Clarcona . After the purchase of Florida Midland, the section north of Clarcona was obsolete and was closed.
In 1899 the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railway was bought up by Plant and reorganized as a further subsidiary under the name Jacksonville and St. Johns River Railway . This direct connection between Sanford and Jacksonville was another gap in the rail network and made shipping on the St. Johns River superfluous.
With the Folkston Cutoff , a new, 87 km long rail line between Folkston and Jesup (with connection to the SF&W main line) was built in 1901, which meant a route shortening of 31 km compared to the previous route via Waycross .
1901 went in Georgia and Alabama for the last time a number of previously independent railway companies in the SF&W. These were:
End of the Plant era and takeover by the ACL
In the fall of 1898, Henry Plant began planning the future of his empire after his death. He hired his personal lawyer to found a capital investment company, his name should be immortalized and his assets secured. In his view, it should not be possible to sell capital shares out of the company for decades. He kept his plans a secret from his wife and their son. Plant's attorney found that the laws of the state of New York (where Plant had his primary residence) were not compatible with his plans, only those of the state of Connecticut , from which he originally came. He then traveled to New Haven , Connecticut in June 1899 and bought a property there in order to carry out his plans. He died a few days later in his previous residence in New York City . His wife Margaret learned that her only an annuity of 30,000 according to his will USD should be entitled, although the value of the company was around $ 50 million. After several years of arguments, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Henry Plant could not be considered a citizen of the state of Connecticut at the time of his death and that his injunctions were therefore irrelevant. This allowed Margaret Plant to claim her shares in the company.
Since his son had no interest in continuing the company, it was sold to the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) and its President Henry Walters on July 1, 1902 for $ 46,563,898 . At the time of the sale, the rail network covered a length of 2235 miles or 3597 kilometers.
literature
- Gregg Turner: A Short History of Florida Railroads. Arcadia Publishing , Mount Pleasant 2014, ISBN 978-1-4396-4254-2 .
Web links
- Map of the Plant System from 1901 at floridamemory.com
