Gregg M. Turner

GREGG M. TURNER (b. New London, Conn., USA), a retired collegiate educator and business owner, has authored eighteen non-fiction books on the enterprise of transportation and Florida history. He is a graduate of Mitchell College, Eastern Connecticut State University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Turner's 'Connecticut Railroads, an Illustrated History' received a United States Congressional Certificate of Merit, while his 'Journey into Florida Railroad History' won a Florida Book-of-the-Year award presented by the Florida Historical Society, Florida State University and the Florida Library Association. Writing about his Connecticut book, the eminent railroad historian Albro Martin notes (in Railroads of America), "it is simply superb. No other attempt to tell the story of railroading in a single state using a maximum of period photographs and a minimum of text can match it." His other railway books include: 'Railroads of Southwest Florida'; 'A Milestone Celebration, The Seaboard Railway to Naples and Miami'; 'A Short History of Florida Railroads'; and 'Florida Railroads in the 1920s.'

A former national director and curator of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society at Harvard Business School, Turner has also written numerous magazine articles and co-authored a definitive biography of southern transportation tycoon Henry Bradley Plant, entitled 'The Plant System of Railroads, Steamships, and Hotels.' Additionally, the author has penned two books about historic Fort Myers, Florida (winter home of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford) and another about the creation of Venice, Florida in the Roaring Twenties which was conceived by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in Cleveland.

Of Turner's newer books is 'The Florida Land Boom of the 1920s' which explores one of the greatest building and migration episodes in American history - one that forever defined the Sunshine State. "Turner’s book about the [1920s] Boom in paradise is well-researched and well-written. Anyone interested in the history of Florida will want to add this book to their collection"--The Florida Historical Quarterly.

Turner's articles include those about the famed Air Line Railroad in Connecticut and Floorida Railroads in the 1920s that have appeared in RAILROAD HISTORY magazine published by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, and a biographical account of S. Davies Warfield, former president and chairman of the Seaboard Air Line Railway, and the famed wreck at Renert, Northb Carolina that have appeared in LINES SOUTH magazine of the Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line Railroads Historical Society.

Other recent books by Turner include 'The New York and New England Railroad'; 'William and Henry Walters, Father & Son Founders of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad"; 'The Deadliest Train Wrecks of New England,' 'America's Deadliest Train Wrecks,' 'The Golden Age of Railroads In & Near New Hampshire's White Mountains', 'The Central New England Railway, A Short History' and 'Remembering, The Gilded Age in Florida (1878-1901).'

The author resides in Fort Myers, Fla.