Julia Tuttle - Moving To Southern Florida

Moving To Southern Florida

Tuttle came to Fort Dallas from Cleveland, Ohio, via steamship with her father, Ephean T. Sturtevant, in 1871. A little over ten years later in 1886, her husband died, leaving her the iron foundry he owned, which she continued to operate. In 1891, when her father died and left her his land in Florida, she sold the iron foundry business in Ohio and relocated to Biscayne Bay.

She used the money from the sale of the business to purchase the James Egan grant of 640 acres (2.6 km2), where the city of Miami is now located, on the north side of the river, including the old Fort Dallas stone buildings, which she converted into her home. In 1891, Tuttle brought her family to live there. Tuttle repaired and converted the home into one of the show places in the area with a sweeping view of the river and Biscayne Bay.

Tuttle immediately decided to take a leading role in the movement to start a new city on the river, but knew that a decent transportation (in that time, a railroad) was necessary to attract development. Tuttle tried to induce Henry Flagler to extend his railroad to Fort Dallas (Miami), and offered to divide her large real estate holdings if he would do this. She wrote numerous letters to Flagler in this connection and finally made the trip to St. Augustine and in person repeated her offer. Her efforts were of no avail at that time; however, providence favored Tuttle. The great freeze on 1894-1895 devastated the old orange belt of central and northern Florida, destroying valuable groves and wiping out fortunes overnight.

Either Flagler then recalled Tuttle's story of the tropical Biscayne Bay County weather and sent some men to investigate, or Tuttle alerted Flagler that the freeze had spared the Miami River, sending as evidence a bouquet of flowers and foliage (possibly oranges) to Flagler, whose order to extend the Florida East Coast Railway was then given. On February 15, 1896 Joseph B. Reilly, John Sewell and E.G. Sewell, the vanguard of the Flagler forces, arrived, and the work of building the Royal Palm Hotel was commenced.

Under an agreement between the two, Tuttle supplied Flagler with the land for a hotel and a railroad station for free, and they split the remainder of her 640 acres (2.6 km²) north of the Miami River in alternating sections. On April 22, 1896, train service of the Florida East Coast Railway came to the area. On July 28, male residents voted to incorporate a new city, Miami. Thereafter, the city steadily grew from a small town to a metropolis.