Many lives were lost during the dangerous construction, but Keith blindly pursued his path. At the same time he created banana plantations on either side of the railroad. By 1881 Keith was sending his bananas by rail to the sea where they were shipped to the United States.

About the time Keith was building his railroad and cultivating bananas in Costa Rica, a Cape Cod sea captain named Lorenzo Dow Baker discovered a "strange fruit" in a marketplace in Jamaica. He brought 160 bunches of these unusual fruits called bananas back to New Jersey and sold them for $2 a bunch, launching a new business with a healthy profit.

Ten years later Baker became a partner with Minor Keith and Andrew Preston, a Boston businessman, to found the successful Boston Fruit Company.

Another merger in 1899 formed the United Fruit Company and created such a powerful company of railroads, steamships, and banana plantations throughout Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama and Santo Domingo, that they were able to influence and control the governments of these countries. The banana plantations had created such a major export throughout the countries of Central America and the Caribbean that those regions were known as the "banana republics."

The company's greatest misdeeds involved corruption and political influence in Guatemala, where they were able to exempt themselves from taxes for 99 years. In addition, United Fruit Company held much of the unused Guatemalan land, preventing the native population from using it. This issue became a political entanglement that involved the U.S. government and Guatemala with United Fruit charging that Guatemala was a communist government. Subsequently, the U.S. invaded the country to wrest it from communist control.

Today the Del Monte company owns United Fruit Company that fell into financial difficulties during the 1970s.

Despite its infamous Central American involvements, the delectable banana ranks second in popularity among fruits, bowing to the apple in the number one position. Central America, however, is not the actual origin of the banana that is considered one of the oldest cultivated fruits in the world. Scholars of history often debate whether the actual forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple. The Koran states that it was a banana.

The true origins of the banana are to be found centuries earlier in the region of Malaysia. By way of curious visitors, bananas traveled to India where they are mentioned in the Buddhist Pali writings dating back to the 6th century BCE as well as in national epic poems of India that have ancient beginnings.

In his campaign in India in 327 BCE, Alexander the Great relished his first taste of the banana, an usual fruit he saw growing on tall trees. He is even credited with bringing the banana from India to the Western world.

Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher and natural scientist, 372 to 287 BCE, retells a legend about wise men who sat under the shade of the banana tree and ate some of its fruit. In the time of the legend the banana plant was given the botanical name that translates as "banana of the sages." Though the botanical name is now obsolete, it makes good story telling.

According to Chinese historian Yang Fu, China was tending plantations of bananas in 200 CE. These bananas grew only in the southern region of China and were considered exotic, rare fruits that never became popular until the 20th century.

Eventually, this tropical fruit reached Madagascar, an island off the southeastern coast of Africa. Beginning in 650 CE Islamic warriors traveled into Africa and were actively engaged in the slave trade. Along with the thriving business in slave trading, the Arabs were successful in trading ivory along with abundant crops of bananas. Through their numerous travels westward via the slave trade, bananas eventually reached Guinea, a small area along the West Coast of Africa.

By 1402 Portuguese sailors discovered the luscious tropical fruit in their travels to the African continent and populated the Canary lslands with their first banana plantations.

Continuing the banana's travels westward, the rootstocks were packed onto a ship under the charge of Tomas de Berlanga, a Portuguese Franciscan monk who brought them to the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo from the Canary Islands in the year 1516. It wasn't long before the banana became popular throughout the Caribbean as well as Central America.