Carl Fisher, one of the founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was a man who very much symbolized the Roaring Twenties. He had unending optimism about his projects and was a promoter who could rival P. T. Barnum. He was fascinated by new technology and anything that moved fast including cars, speedboats and airplanes.  

Born in Greenfield, Indiana in 1874, his family struggled financially. After his parents separated when he was in the sixth grade, he dropped out of school and found a variety of jobs to help support his mother and two brothers. When he was fifteen, he got a job as a “news butcher” on a narrow-gauge railroad selling newspapers, magazines, inexpensive books, candy and tobacco to the passengers. While he had already exhibited a flair for promotion, he honed his marketing skills on the train.

He was one of the early adopters of the bicycle and successfully participated in bicycle races even though his eyesight was poor due to a severe astigmatism. He funneled his love of the bicycle into his first business, a bicycle repair shop which he operated with his brothers. Soon, Fisher decided that there was a better future if he sold bicycles rather than repairing them. At age nineteen, he crafted a strategy to become a distributor of Pope-Toledo bicycles, the manufacturer of the Columbia bicycle. Traveling to Toledo, he asked Colonel Albert Pope for a railroad car of the bicycles. Amazingly, Pope agreed and provided the bicycles at cost. Fisher then successfully approached an Indianapolis banker for a loan of $500 for publicity. With the money, Fisher had hundreds of small balloons created which could stay aloft for several days. The balloons were filled with paper tags. He purchased ads in the Indianapolis newspapers promising that the fifty people who got one of the balloons with the “lucky” numbers would be given a free bicycle. His promotion worked and both he and Pope made a nice profit on the promotion. Fisher became the Indianapolis distributor for the Pope bicycle.

The bicycle craze quickly faded at the end of the 1890s. Fisher had already become enamored with the automobile and turned his bicycle shop into the first automobile agency in Indianapolis. One day in 1904, a man walked into his store carrying a cylinder with a tube attached at one end. When the end of the tube was lit, it provided a bright, steady light which could be used as the power source for the automobile headlight. Fisher approached Jim Allison about joining him in a business to manufacture and market the tubes which were filled with highly explosive acetylene gas. Allison agreed and they started the Prest-O-Lite Company. The company filled a need of the motoring public and both men became exceedingly wealthy through the sale and refilling of the canisters.

Fisher was involved in automobile races in the early 1900s which were held primarily on dirt horse tracks. After being part of the American team for the Gordon Bennett Cup race in France, Fisher returned proclaiming to anyone that the American automobile industry could be devastated when the European automobiles were imported. His solution was a much larger racetrack where the American automobiles could be thoroughly tested. In 1908, he persuaded Allison, Arthur Newby and Frank Wheeler to join him in building the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They rushed through the construction of the Speedway and held its first races in August 1909. It was made of crushed stone and oil which crumbled underneath the weight of the automobiles causing several deaths and injuries on the first weekend of racing. With the speedway doomed due to safety concerns, the men elected to have it bricked. Two years later with competition from other tracks, they held the first Indianapolis 500.

Carl and his wife, Jane, visited Miami in February 1910 and Carl was immediately enthralled with it. Always impulsive, Fisher bought two lots on Biscayne Bay where he built a home. When Fisher visited what became Miami Beach, it was just a sandbar with mangroves on the western shore with a few inhabitants. Among those living on Miami Beach was a farmer, John Collins. To get his crops to market, Collins started to build a bridge but ran out of money before it was finished. Fisher provided Collins $50,000 to finish the bridge and in return was deeded 200 acres. Fisher was not alone envisioning a community there but with his deep pockets, he started uprooting the mangroves and using fill to expand Miami Beach on the Biscayne Bay side.

When Fisher and Allison sold their interest in Prest-O-Lite to Union Carbide, Fisher invested the proceeds in Miami Beach. By this time, Fisher’s vision had changed from modest homes to homes for the wealthy not only from the Northeast but also the Midwest. He began building hotels, golf courses, polo courses, and other amenities. When progress in selling the lots was slow to take off, Fisher built hotels so that vacationers could stay for an extended period and would decide to build a winter home. By the mid-1920s, Miami and Miami Beach real estate was skyrocketing.

Meanwhile, Fisher had a new vision…a northern resort on Long Island and was busy developing Montauk. In September 1926, a category 4 hurricane hit Miami Beach. Fisher found himself stretched too thin as he continued to try to develop Montauk and redevelop Miami Beach. Complicating things for Fisher was the collapse in the real estate boom. Properties which were changing hands at ever increasing prices suddenly couldn’t be sold.

The 1930s were difficult for Fisher. He was never interested in the minute details. While it was believed his wealth had peaked during the real estate boom between $50 million and $100 million, he was never liquid. Between the 1926 hurricane and the Montauk development, he soon ran out of money. After being turned down by bankers for funding, the Montauk development was abandoned and Fisher sold his large oceanfront home in Miami Beach. By this time, his health suffered from his heavily drinking. While he had been one of the movers and shakers in south Florida, in his final years, he became little noticed.  He died in 1938 in Miami Beach.

This book is well researched and if interested in the life of Carl Fisher, it is worth the read.