12 TEQUESTA


 freezes. I said: 'I have also here written proposals from Mrs.
 Tuttle and Mr. and Mrs. Brickell, inviting you to extend your
 railroad from Palm Beach to Miami and offering to share with
 you their holdings at Miami for a town site.'
 Mr. Flagler looked at me for some minutes in perfect si-
 lence, then he said: 'How soon can you arrange for me to go to
 Miami?'I2

 Flagler had decided to see this "freeze proof" section for him-
self. In late February 1895, the railroad baron traveled by special
train to West Palm Beach before transferring to a launch for a trip
down the Florida East Coast Line canal, which by this time was
completed from Lake Worth to New River. The party spent the night
in Fort Lauderdale, and left by carriage the next morning to travel to
the northern shore of Biscayne Bay where they were met by Tuttle's
launch and brought to Miami. Ingraham recalled that the day was
beautiful and "that night was the most perfect moonlight that I have
ever seen." Before bedtime, Mr. Flagler made the decision to accept
the offers of Tuttle and Brickell, extend his railroad to Miami and
build a resort hotel there.25
 The party returned to St. Augustine in early March with a
verbal agreement to extend the railroad to Miami and to develop a
city in that locale, but formal contracts had yet to be drawn up and
signed. No official announcements were made at the time, although
rumors over the meaning of the trip began to appear in the press.26
 The Titusville paper observed that, "Some optimists believe the
railroad will be extended to deep water off Key Largo, others think
a mammoth hotel will be constructed on Bay Biscayne."27 From
Sanford: "Flagler has decided to extend to Bay Biscayne and also he
has purchased half of Key Largo,"28 The Jacksonville report noted
that the natives of Bay Biscayne are "very much stirred up by the
advent of the big millionaire's [visit]. It is generally supposed that this
tour means the extension of the east coast line to Bay Biscayne."29
 Preliminary to drawing up a formal contract, Flagler wrote Tuttle
a long letter on April 22, 1895, recapping her offer of land to him in
exchange for his extension of the railroad to Miami, laying out a city
and building a hotel. The terms, as they appeared in the letter, pro-
vided that Tuttle would award Flagler a 100-acre tract of land. The
boundaries of this tract would stretch approximately from the bay on
the east (at that time the shoreline ran along today's Biscayne Bou-