After our breakfast at Cafe Verde, we wandered downtown New Smyrna Beach.
The holidays are here! This is the Flagler Tavern.
Much like Key West, people get around via golf cart.
The famous Flagler Avenue beach sign! A lot of things seemed to be named Flagler in this part of the world, even an hour north in St. Augustine. So I looked it up. It’s for Henry Flagler who got his start when his family agreed to loan money to an early-days John D. Rockefeller on the condition that Henry be made partner in the Standard Oil Corporation. Flagler had the idea that allowed Standard Oil to undercut competitors, and Standard Oil eventually became a monopoly.

When Flagler’s wife became ill and the doctors recommended snowbirding to Florida, Flagler had his first visit to the sunshine state. After his wife died, he married her caregiver, and they honeymooned in St. Augustine, which needed some hotels and some transportation options. Flagler stepped in and provided those things (his Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine is now Flagler College), and he ended up developing (putting in a railroad) the east coast of Florida, all the way down to Key West, including founding Miami.

So naturally, the state of Florida loved him. When his second wife was declared insane, he asked the state to introduce a law allowing a divorce. They obliged, and even now Florida allows divorce in the case of a spouse’s mental incapacity. Flagler was also accused of using (mostly Black) convicts to hack a path through the wilderness for his railroad, creating harsh working conditions and debt slavery, but the courts found no evidence, and Flagler was never legally convicted.
And speaking of Florida law, you can drive on the beach here! People just park their cars, unload their chairs, and sit by their bumpers to watch the waves.
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