Excerpt from Acres of Ashes: The Story of the Great Fire That Swept Over the City of Jacksonville, Florida, on the Afternoon of Friday, May 3, 1901, Resulting in the Loss of Seven Lives, Destroying of $15, 000, 000 in Property; Total Insurance Less Than $5, 000, 000 Upon the State of Florida the morning of Fri day, May 3, dawned to show every promise of hope and prosperity. Down the long peninsula crawled trains that labored with the weight of tourists re turning to the north and west after a winter which had filled every hotel in the land to, overflowing and gladdened the hearts of the landlords. The golf links and the tennis grounds were deserted and some of the great hotels were closed for the season, but many lingered before returning in view of the late frosts and all felt reluctant to turn their backs on a time and place of so much enjoy ment. In orange grove and pineapple plantation, on truck farm and tobacco field, laborers appeared and the work of the day began. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.