1906 On September 11, this hard hitting cartoon, “The Flagler Standard Oil Octopus…now reaching for Key West,” appeared on the front page of THE DELAND MERCURY, a weekly newspaper published each Tuesday in DeLand. The editor and publisher was attorney J. Hall Brumsey, who introduced the first auto to the city in 1902 while still a student at Stetson University Law School. By 1906, Standard Oil partner Henry M. Flagler had formed his Florida East Coast Railway; opened a long list of hotels, including the Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine, the Ormond in Ormond Beach, the Breakers in Palm Beach, the Royal Palm in Miami, and the Continental in Jacksonville. His Model Land Company owned more than 2 million acres from Jacksonville to Key West, and construction of the Oversea Railroad to Key West had begun. Flagler also was heavily involved in a project being pushed by two early Florida governors, William Sherman Jennings and his successor, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward: draining and “reclaiming” land in the Everglades. Preservationists were starting to push back.

(The original cartoon is part of the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Papers in the University of Florida Digital Collection)