MADRID, Spain.- In 1896, railroad magnate Henry Flagler decided to extend his railroad connection to the east coast of Miami, which until then only reached Palm Beach, north of the city, from New York.
It is worth noting that this expansion was contributed to by the insistence of the businesswoman Julia Tuttlenicknamed the “Mother of Miami”.
After the extension of the railway, the city, which until now had a small community and was far from its current splendor, went into an immediate boom.
At that time, Henry Flagler asked Ethan V. Blackman, a journalist in Daytona, central Florida, to write an article about the new city for The Home Seeker, a magazine promoting their properties.
In his text, Blackman referred to Miami as the magical city, a nickname that continues to this day.
The letter in which Flagler commissioned the article was accompanied by a map of Miami.
“What inspired me to call Miami the Magic City was Mr. Flagler’s enthusiasm plus a map of the city. See, when I wrote that sentence I hadn’t even seen Miami,” Blackman explained years later in an interview with the Miami Daily News.
“In reviewing the material, I became so excited about the possibilities of the city bordering the Gulf Stream and facing the wide waters of Biscayne Bay, that I referred to it as ‘The Magic City,’” he also said.
After the publication of the article in The Home Seeker, Henry Flagler named Ethan V. Blackman editor of the magazine, a position he held for years.
Currently in travel guides, advertising slogans and speeches, it is common to find the reference to Miami as “the Magic City”.
