In issue #12, KWHx magazine gave our readers a short introduction to Henry Plant. Though today Plant takes a back seat to that other Henry, Mr. Flagler, it was Plant who first saw the value of Key West as a shipping port. It's only because Flagler outlived Plant by more than a dozen years, and happened to bring the train to town in the interim, that his name evokes more reaction in Key West in 2008.

Henry Bradley Plant was born in October of 1819. Though privileged and private-schooled, he signed on as a deck hand aboard a steamboat at the age of eighteen instead of taking advantage of a full scholarship to Yale. He knocked about for a few years, learning the steamship business and discovering an interest in and a knack for express shipping. Aligning with the Adams Express Company, he first managed their New England region and then took over the Southern region­ covering all area south of the Potomac and Ohio rivers. The Adams Express Company, fearful of confiscation of their Southern properties at the start of the Civil War, transferred their Southern interests to Plant as a reward for twenty years of excellent service. He organized these holdings into the Southern Express Company, became its president, and served as official agent to the Confederacy. Photo courtesy of The Florida Historical Society.

Following the Civil War, when the railroads in the South were either bankrupt or ruined, Plant bought both the Charleston & Savannah Railroad and the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad and Steamboat Company at foreclosure sales. By 1884, Plant had grown the company to include 14 railway companies with 2,100 miles of track and several steamship lines.

Basing his business in Tampa, Plant did there what Flagler would do 20+ years later in Key West--- he built a train track to the water, put up hotels, and created piers for his steamships. A small city, Port Tampa, grew up around the port and remained a viable community until absorbed by Tampa in the mid 20th Century.

By 1886, Plant held the postal service contract for mail delivery between Port Tampa, Key West and Havana. In 1887, regularly scheduled steamship travel between Key West and Havana began courtesy of the Plant Steam Ship Line.