In my research about Carl Fisher for “How Indianapolis Built America and How it will Rebuild it with the National Bicycle Greenway”, I came across this rare photo of him. The words here are excerpted from the huge chapter this man’s huge life has earned in my book:

[..]

“Fisher went on to build the Dixie Hwy that connected Indianapolis to Miami, where across the Biscayne Bay, he built hotels and tirelessly promoted the island city of Miami Beach. Recognized as the chief architect of Miami Beach, after a brief foray building the resort community of Montauk, New York, he spent his final years in his adopted Florida city, where he died of sclerosis of the liver on July 15, 1939.

Fisher’s organ failure, the result of years of carousing, and promoting, all of which he did at full tilt, ended his life at age 65. He took his last breath in St Francis Hospital, the world class healing facility he had built. Ironically, the man he built it with, James Allison, the Presto-O-Lite business partner he had made millions with, died there twelve years earlier.

Before he moved his irrepressible energy to Florida, not only did Carl G Fisher transform the city of Indianapolis, its industry, its buildings and its transportation, etc, his was the spark that also set an entire nation on fire with his vision of a coast-to-coast road. Fisher’s signature achievement, the Lincoln Hwy, was the Silk Road of the North American continent. Its impact was so huge, we have given it the whole next chapter.