For Sale —American Paradise (19 page)

The
Palm Beach Post
reported that the holdup at the Salerno train station started the sequence of events that led the deputies to the Ashleys' hideout. But John Ashley, in the interview with Hix Stuart, said he'd gotten into an argument with a mechanic in Salerno who'd tried to cheat him on some repairs to a car.

“These hicks called up [Palm Beach County Sheriff] Bob Baker and told him something had to be done about me,” Ashley told Stuart.

Newspapers reported that the gunfire started when a dog barked. Ashley said it started when gang member Albert Miller, who was standing outside a tent, heard a shot.

Gunfire erupted, “and in a few minutes it sounded like a war,” Ashley told Stuart. Deputy Sheriff Fred Baker, nephew of the sheriff, was shot dead. Newspapers reported that Miller killed the lawman. Ashley told Stuart that he'd killed the deputy.

Miller was severely wounded in the exchange. One bullet shattered an arm; another hit him in the hip. Joe Ashley was killed as he got up from the cot where he'd been sleeping, and Laura Upthegrove was hit in the legs with a spray of buckshot.

But John Ashley was untouched.

“They poured enough lead at me to kill ten men, but fate seemed against them,” he said.

The gunfire stopped after Laura Upthegrove screamed in pain. Her wounds weren't fatal, and although badly wounded, Miller managed to escape with John Ashley.

Dozens of armed volunteers spread out to chase Ashley and Miller. A mob, enraged at the death of Deputy Sheriff Fred Baker and just tired of the Ashleys' long history of crime, set fire to Joe Ashley's house in Gomez, at the edge of the Everglades, about ten miles south of Stuart. They also burned the nearby home of Miller's family, as well as a small general store belonging to the Millers.

Despite his wounds, Miller eluded the posse until after nightfall, when he finally gave up after being surrounded while hiding in a shed. John Ashley, however, got away.

The following day, the story of the deadly shoot-out in the Florida Everglades was published on the front pages of newspapers across the country.

“Murder, bank robbery, highway robbery, moonshining, piracy on the high seas, and robbery of rum runners are among the crimes credited to the Ashley gang,” said the
Lima News
of Ohio.

“They are accused of every crime from murder to hijacking,” the
Chicago Tribune
said.

Some of the stories undoubtedly annoyed business boosters trying to cash in on the thousands of winter visitors to Florida.

“Within a score of miles of where the wealth and society of the country are gathered in pleasure seeking, posses are scouring the Everglades . . . in an effort to capture escaped members of the gang,” said the
Lincoln Star
of Nebraska.

“While the battle was in progress yesterday, society leaders and debutantes [in Palm Beach County] were dipping in the surf, dancing and playing tennis and golf, unaware of the death struggle between the law and the criminals,” said the
Lincoln State Journal
.

“John Ashley, one of the two members of the notorious Ashley gang still at large, today apparently had made good his escape as small searching parties, one by one, gave up the pursuit and returned to their homes,” said the
Kansas City Star
.

The gang had been dealt a stunning blow, but John Ashley wasn't through yet.

A few weeks after the battle in the Everglades, publisher William Randolph Hearst and columnist Arthur Brisbane paid a visit to William Jennings Bryan in his Miami home.

Hearst, whose newspaper circulation war in New York with publisher Joseph Pulitzer is considered a major factor in pushing the United States into war with Spain in 1898, was at the pinnacle of his publishing influence. He owned twenty-eight newspapers in 1924, as well as news services, magazines, a film company, and real estate.

But Brisbane, who had been working for Hearst since 1897, was said to be the real brains behind Hearst's success. And his boss had rewarded him. Brisbane was known as the highest-
paid journalist in the United States, and he was fond of introducing himself by telling people how much Hearst paid him.

In his nationally syndicated “Today” column, Brisbane praised the “old-fashioned” beauty of Bryan's home overlooking Biscayne Bay.

“This place of mine is the most beautiful spot in Florida, and, therefore, in the world,” Bryan told Brisbane.

But, Brisbane wrote, politics were “boiling and raging like lava” in Bryan's heart.

Bryan was indeed trying to insert himself once again into national politics. He'd seriously considered running for one of Florida's seats in the US Senate, and now was seeking to become part of the state's delegation to the upcoming Democratic National Convention in June.

Not all of Brisbane's travels in Florida made it into his column, however. Author Oliver Carlson wrote that railroad executives and real estate brokers wanted very much for Brisbane to see the beauty and the economic opportunities in Florida.

They knew that Brisbane was almost compulsive about real estate.

“Brisbane's enthusiasm for real estate knew no bounds,” Carlson wrote. “He wrote about it in his columns. He spoke of it in his lectures. Friends, acquaintances, even strangers were urged to buy! Buy! Buy!”

Miami was in the early stages of the real estate speculation that would soon become a national mania. Solomon Davies Warfield, owner of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, was smart enough to get Brisbane out of Miami and show him property where prices were not yet escalating. For two days, Warfield and Brisbane looked at property, including land in northern Palm Beach County near Stuart, on the St. Lucie Canal that connected Lake Okeechobee and the Atlantic Ocean.

There's no record of whether Warfield disclosed to Brisbane the fact that he was making some big plans for that area. But Warfield's plans certainly would have made the property more attractive to Brisbane, and Warfield and others who were deeply invested in southern Florida's economic growth wanted very much for Brisbane to start mentioning Florida favorably in his columns, which were read by at least twenty million people.

The best way to get Brisbane to start endorsing Florida was to sell him some property. Brisbane was very interested—and he was not alone. Many others were also becoming quite captivated.

Across the United States, readers of newspapers and large-circulation magazines were learning about the incredible profits being turned by ordinary people who had simply bought some land in Florida. In March, for example, readers of
The New Republic
read about a woman who had just sold her house in Miami for $100,000—more than $1.3 million in twenty-
first-century dollars. She'd bought it for $18,000 in 1921. Another investor paid $2,500 for Florida property in 1921 and turned down an offer of $25,000.

In the past, the stream of traffic into Florida had ebbed with the traditional end of the season in April. But that didn't happen in 1924. Newcomers continued to pour in. The Dixie Highway was becoming crowded. “They come in droves, flocks, herds,”
The New Republic
wrote.

And they were enchanted by what they found.

A visitor in March 1924 sent a postcard to friends back home on Washington Street in Ogdensburg, New York, describing the enchanting surroundings during one of the frequent concerts in Miami's Royal Palm Park—where even the birds seemed to join in the fun.

“Afternoons and evenings, a mockingbird sits nearby on a tree and sings beautifully along with the band and keeping in perfect tune and time,” the visitor wrote.

But if the concert—and the harmonious mockingbird's accompaniment—were free, not much else was.

“There's plenty to do if one feels like spending money constantly,” the Ogdensburg visitor wrote. “But there is a limit.”

There was no limit on prices, however. Prices for everything—food, hotel rooms, gasoline—were steep, and getting steeper. And those who came to invest were in for a shock.

“Even swampland several miles west of Miami was selling for fantastic prices by 1924,” said Miami historian Paul George.

Real estate broker J. Newton Lummus Jr. said land sales in Miami were “on fire” in 1924, and they would stay that way throughout the year instead of slowing down, as they usually did, when the tourist season ended.

It was the year, in short, that Florida starting taking on the aspects of a “modern, latter-day gold rush,” George said.

As real estate prices escalated and word of fast fortunes spread, more and more people came to Florida seeking instant wealth. The gold rush mentality set in, and in such an environment, writer Gertrude Mathews Shelby would later note, thinking too much about real estate investments was a hindrance to making money.

“The people who have made real fortunes check their brains before leaving home,” a real estate broker told Shelby. “Buy anywhere. You can't lose.”

Handford Mobley, the daring youngest member of the Ashley Gang, was not at the Everglades hideout on the morning of the deadly shoot-
out with lawmen on January 9, 1924. Some accounts say he happened to be making a run to the Bahamas when the gunfight happened. By other accounts, he was in San Francisco, and immediately started back to Florida when he read about the bloody battle in a newspaper.

By late summer 1924, however, he was back in Palm Beach County, and he and the surviving gang members were plotting another bank robbery.

On the afternoon of Friday, September 12, Mobley, John Ashley, and two occasional gang members, Joe Tracy and Ray Lynn, hijacked a motorist near Lantana, just south of West Palm Beach, and ordered him to drive south to Pompano, about halfway between West Palm Beach and Miami.

When they neared their destination, they ordered the driver to stop and Ashley tied him to a tree.

For thirteen years, John Ashley had been playing a deadly game of hide-and-
seek with the law-enforcing Baker family of Palm Beach County. He was furious that Baker's posse had killed his father in the January gunfight. Before he left the driver, he gave him a bullet. Assuming that the man eventually would be talking to Palm Beach County Sheriff Robert Baker, Ashley told him to tell Baker that he had another bullet just like that one for him.

Ashley and the three other gang members drove the stolen car to the Bank of Pompano. They followed their usual plan of striking in mid-afternoon, when banks typically were less crowded.

Reports varied as to how much loot the gang got, but it was probably at least $8,000 or $9,000 in cash and about $18,000 in government bonds. Before they left, Ashley gave another bullet to a cashier and told him to keep it as a souvenir.

They drove north in the stolen car and then headed west. Lawmen found the car abandoned near the banks of the Hillsboro Canal, a drainage canal that sliced through the Everglades to Lake Okeechobee. Once again, the Glades had swallowed the Ashley Gang.

Robbing the bank at Pompano seemed to energize John Ashley and Hand-ford Mobley. It had been a decent haul, but they wanted a spectacular take.

Ashley and Mobley had made many trips to West End to haul booze back to Florida, and they knew a huge amount of cash flowed into the liquor dealers there every day—so much money that hundreds of thousands of dollars were routinely hauled from West End to banks in Freeport and Nassau. West End was isolated from the rest of the islands. A boat fleeing West End with, say, a huge amount of money could be in trackless open water in minutes.