PALM BEACH, Fla.—You can thank Henry Flagler for putting the Sunshine State on the map as a tourist destination. Flagler, who co-founded Standard Oil with John Rockefeller during America’s Gilded Age, recognized the potential of Florida as a wintering destination—he thought the sunshine and the ocean air were good for his ailing wife—but there was one problem.
Florida was a frontier backwater in those days, and no decent hotels were to be found. Flagler took the matter into his own hands, building his estate, Whitehall, based on Beaux-Arts style architecture, and the legendary Breakers resort, inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Not only that, but to get there, he linked up Florida in one single railroad system, paving the way for agriculture and tourism. (It eventually went all the way to Key West.)
