Carl Fisher is generally considered to be the father of Miami Beach, and one of the best biographies of him I’ve ever read appeared in Coronet in 1949. Here are a few excerpts from that biography:
THAT MAN FISHER must be crazy! The Hoosier fool is trying to make a tourist resort out of that crocodile hole.”
The native Floridians who jeered were missing their guesses. “That crocodile hole” was about to become the Southern paradise, Miami Beach, and “that man Fisher” was Carl Graham Fisher, whose “crazy” schemes took him from poverty to riches that at one time were estimated at more than $100,000,000.
It is hard to estimate fully Fisher’s influence on American life, but one thing is certain. He changed the vacation habits of the nation. When roads were little better than ruts used by farmers to get crops to town, he initiated the first transcontinental highway. This, the Lincoln Highway, under the banner of “See America First,” launched our phenomenal road program.
If you are included among the lucky ones who spend their winter vacations in Florida, you may thank Fisher. As Will Rogers put it: “Carl was the midwife of Florida. Had there been no Fisher, Florida would be known today as just ‘The Turpentine State.’ He rehearsed the mosquitoes till they wouldn’t bite you until after you had bought.”
Carl was born in 1874 in Greensburg, Indiana, and started his climb at 12 when he left the classroom he despised and got a job as grocery boy. Five years later, with a few hundred dollars he had saved, he and his two brothers opened a bicycle shop. Promoting a new idea seemed to he Fisher’s forte, and soon the fame of the store, as well as the business it garnered, dismayed Carl’s competitors.
First, to gain prestige for the shop, he joined a team of professional racing cyclists, one of whom was Barney Oldfield. Then he resorted to more-spectacular stunts, such as riding a bike on a tightrope between the two highest buildings in town while the horrified Indianians of 1900 shook their heads.
“That boy is crazy!” they said.
But only Carl and his cash register knew how crazy he really was. He built a bicycle two stories high and rode it through the streets. One day he released 1,000 toy balloons, 100 of which bore lucky numbers entitling finders to free bikes.
When Oldfield turned up at Indianapolis with a contraption called an aut-ee-mo-beel, it was only natural that Carl would be the first person in town to own one. Then he joined with Barney again, this time as an auto racer, and together they barnstormed the country.
In 1905, he took part in the James Gordon Bennett Cup Race in France, but the Yankee team went down to such humiliating defeat before superior European cars that Carl promised he would do whatever he could to make American machines supreme—a promise that was to grow into the world-famous Indianapolis Speedway.
Fisher’s own racing career ended shortly afterward in Zanesville, Ohio, when his car crashed through a guard rail and he narrowly escaped death. Returning to Indianapolis, he began to apply the same procedure to selling cars that he had used with bicycles. He had a large orange balloon constructed and with fanfare announced that he was going to ride his seven-passenger Stoddard-Dayton through the clouds.
Thousands cheered when the giant balloon lifted the car off the ground and was wafted out of sight. They cheered again when Carl returned in the big white car with the balloon folded up in the back seat. It was an amazing stunt, and newspapers all over the country took up the story.
In later life, Fisher always got a laugh out of that promotion. “I was as amazed as anyone else—but for different reasons,” he said. “Actually, I had taken the heavy motor out of the car before we went up. When the balloon landed a couple of miles away, my brother was there to meet us with an identical car. It was simple, yet no one ever seemed to figure it out.”
Fisher’s Indianapolis salesroom soon grew to he one of the largest car agencies outside New York. The infant auto industry was beginning its fabulous career, and Carl was in on the ground floor. One day a friend brought him a tank of compressed gas that he thought might be used for auto headlights instead of kerosene. Fisher capitalized on this idea, and the Prest-O-Lite Company was formed. Soon, acetylene gas for lights made night driving practical and safe.
WITH THE PREST-O-LITE profits, Carl began to spread out into various business transactions. “The Fisher Touch” was a magic guarantee of success. Things went so well that at last Carl could go ahead with his pet dream of making American automobiles better than the European variety.
The Indianapolis Speedway was intended primarily as a proving ground for cars. The 2-mile brick bowl with its banked turns permitted machines to develop speeds that were impossible on flat tracks. Carl brought expensive cars from Europe and at the famous “Gasoline Alley,” before assembled U. S. manufacturers, he tore down and analyzed the construction that made them superior. Before long, American cars were the best in the world.
“When I built that track,” Carl recalled, “everybody said I was crazy to put it five miles out of town, That was a long trip for a horse and buggy. But I was counting on the day when every American family would have a car.”
The Speedway was the scene of two of Fisher’s most-famous feats. There he sponsored a National Balloon Race, and followed it with a National Air Meet, at which the Wright brothers and other sky pioneers raced their kite-like craft.
In 1909, Carl married a 15-year old girl, Jane Watts. For a honeymoon, they voyaged down the Mississippi on Carl’s new cabin cruiser. In the Gulf of Mexico, the party was caught in a hurricane, blown ashore and marooned for ten days in an obscure cove. Newspapers ran obituaries of the spectacular Hoosier, and the families of the missing went into mourning.
When rescued, the newlyweds hurried back to Indianapolis, while a friend of Carl’s, John H. Levi, marine engineer, took the boat on for a later rendezvous. After a series of misadventures, Levi’s voyage ended in a small Florida town called Miami. Rather than go up to Jacksonville, their appointed meeting place, the exasperated Levi wired Fisher, “Am in a pretty little town called Miami. Why not meet me here?” That was how Fisher came to Miami. He liked it so well that he bought a winter home on its shores.
Back in Indianapolis, Carl assembled leaders of the auto industry and announced his plan for a coast-to-coast highway. He was tired of bad roads or no roads at all. Some farmers were making more money towing cars out of ruts than from their farms. Dubious road markings were equally depressing.
Finally Carl convinced his audience that good highways would mean more business, and that it was up to the industry to supply road-building material to towns and counties along the route of his embryonic highway. “This road will serve as an example to the rest of the nation,” he promised. Fisher set a goal of $10,000,000, and had almost half of it pledged by the time the Lincoln Highway Association took over the job.
When it was suggested that a statue of Fisher be erected as “Father of the Lincoln Highway,” he hastily declined in a letter to A. G. Batchelor, secretary of the American Automobile Association:
Dear Batch:
I am not much on statuary and right now I think it is a good time to pull out personally and take from our possible subscribers the idea that the road plan is mine. If any particular noise is made for any particular person or clique, this plan is going to suffer.
Carl’s attitude toward personal glorification was one of his many contradictions. Avid for publicity on any of his projects, he always remained personally shy, avoiding the limelight and seeking the company of a few chosen friends. Steve Hannagan, one of America’s top publicity men, got his start with Fisher and worked with him all through the Hoosier’s active career.
Says Hannagan today: “Fisher was the greatest and most-natural press agent who ever lived. He had a real public touch. He built before he sold.”
In 1912, CARL DECIDED to retire. He liquidated all his investments, with the exception of the Speedway, and went to his home in Florida. He had $6,000,000 in cash and figured that he could loaf in style for the rest of his life. But he was a man of action and soon became bored with cruising in Biscayne Bay.
Across from Miami, on the long, narrow peninsula that reaches into the Atlantic, was another man of action, John Collins, 75-year-old Quaker who had come from New Jersey to grow tropical fruit. His avocado crop had been phenomenal, but he had no way to get it to market. So he began building a 21/-mile bridge across the Bay.
Before Collins was half-finished, he ran out of money. Fisher was so amazed at the audacity of the man beginning such a project at his age that he loaned the intrepid Quaker S50,000 to complete the job—without demanding security. Out of gratitude, Collins presented his benefactor with a 200-acre strip of property on the strand. All but the sandy shore was a swamp jungle, so when Fisher bought an additional 200 acres his friends asked the usual question: “Has Carl gone crazy?” But Carl wasn’t crazy; he was just dreaming again.
“I’m going to build the prettiest little city in the world right here,” Carl confided to Levi. “We’ll kill two birds with one stone. First we dredge the Bay to give it a deep channel and at the same time fill the swamp with the sand.”
It is inconceivable to Miami Beach visitors today that the tropical Eden where they stand was once a steaming stretch of swampland. The beach became a giant sand pile in which Carl played Aladdin. The mangroves were cut away, and sand from the Bay was modeled into parks, golf courses and polo fields. Islands were built. Lakes and canals were dug. Boulevards were laid out. A “magic city” blossomed before the eyes of incredulous onlookers.
By 1922, however, Fisher’s entire fortune had melted into the sand. Cynics said, “We told you so”— but a little too soon. At the crucial moment, his scheme caught on. Carl led a battery of press agents to victory by selling sun, sand, sea and sex (the bathing beauty). By 1925, at the peak of the real-estate hysteria, his Miami Beach holdings were evaluated at $100,000,000.
But he despised the operators and “binder boys” who made Florida their happy hunting grounds in the ’20s. To keep his property out of the sphere of speculation, Fisher held the bulk of the market and placed severe restrictions on the remainder.
During the boom, a typical Fisher story was widely circulated. One morning while horseback riding, he came upon an old man loading an equally old wagon with materials from a Fisher building project. Carl asked the old man what he was doing.
“Ah’m gettin’ some of these casements for a house ah’m buildin’ myself. That rich old Fisher will never miss ’em.”
“That’s right,” said Carl, and got down from his horse to help the old man load his wagon.
Carl built four hotels in Miami Beach—the Lincoln, King Cole, Nautilus and Flamingo. Each visitor was his “paying guest.” He would not have bell boys at the Lincoln, because he insisted that tipping embarrassed people. In the kitchen near the lounge stood an enormous refrigerator where meats and cold cuts were kept, so that when guests came in at night they could feel at home and “raid the icebox” free of charge. On each floor, a maid kept constant vigil on all guests’ clothes. If a garment became wrinkled, it was pressed and returned without cost.
When at last Miami Beach was a success, Carl’s friends expected him to retire as he had planned 12 years before, but as usual he could not rest. He was visualizing a summer resort equivalent to Miami Beach on Montauk Point, at the tip of Long Island. When associates protested, he said: “You dudes can sit around here on your white pants if you want, but I can’t. I’ve got to see the dirt fly!”
He bought about 10,000 acres of Montauk for $2,500,000 and began the Miami Beach story all over again—on an even larger scale. Dredges were put to work, channels were deepened, islands built and canals dug. The buildings were all styled to maintain the flavor of an English countryside.
Carl saw Montauk not only as a summer playground for the rich, but also as a harbor for transatlantic steamers. The ships, he figured, could save a whole day by putting in at Montauk, which was only three hours and forty minutes by rail from New York.
Montauk was the end of Fisher’s career. The fates were against him. From every side adversity threw blows at the “dream builder.” The tragic Florida hurricane of 1926, political interference, and finally the crash of ’29 were the final touches. He had gambled heavily on Montauk and lost. Mortgages on his Florida property were foreclosed, and soon the bulk of the Fisher fortune was wiped out.
Joe Copps, a long-time Fisher associate, said, of him: “The reason Carl lost out was the way he did business. He wouldn’t sell a lot until the project was completely developed. I believe Carl was the most-honest man I ever met. He maintained that people shouldn’t buy anything that they weren’t completely sure of. He reserved the risks for himself.”
Fisher’s last years were spent at Miami Beach in near-poverty for him—$10,000 a year. People remember him as an amiable, informal old man who talked of great plans for the Florida Keys. He was a familiar character on the beach, dressed in Norfolk blazer and white flannel trousers. He was never without the floppy felt hat and perforated patent-leather pumps that had become Fisher trade-marks.
When he died in July, 1939, Miami Beach went into mourning, and the great of America came to pay last respects to the builder who had given so much to the country he loved. Among the honorary pallbearers were Walter Chrysler, John Oliver La Gorce, Barney Oldfield, Charles F. Kettering, William K. Vanderbilt, James M. Cox, Frank Seiberling, Gar Wood and Bernard Gimbel.
Today, in a small park on the north end of Miami Beach, stands a bronze bust dedicated to Carl Fisher. It bears the simple legend:
“He carved a great city out of a jungle.”
What a great story of a great man’s life!