Carl Graham Fisher (January 12, 1874 – July 15, 1939) was an American entrepreneur in the automotive industry, highway construction and real estate development.

In 1904, he and friend James A. Allison bought an interest in the U.S. patent to manufacture acetylene headlights, a precursor to electric models that became common about ten years later.

After being injured in stunts himself, and following a safety debacle at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway, of which he was a principal, he helped develop paved racetracks and public roadways.

Fisher, with the assistance of his partners John Graham McKay and Thomas Walkling, became involved in the real-estate development of a largely unpopulated barrier island near Miami.

They invested in land and dredging, promoted deed restrictions, and provided much-needed working capital to the earlier Lummus and Collins family pioneers to develop Miami Beach.

He worked in a grocery and a bookstore, then later he sold newspapers, books, tobacco, candy, and other items on trains departing Indianapolis, a major railroad center not far from Greensburg.

During his many promotional stunts, he was frequently injured on the dirt and gravel roadways, leading him to become one of the early developers of automotive safety features.

A highly publicized stunt involved dropping a bicycle from the roof of the tallest building in Indianapolis, which brought on a confrontation with the police.

She then married and divorced three men; after her last marriage she went to court to change her name to Jane Watts Fisher and falsely styled herself as his widow.

The headlight patent made him rich as an automotive parts supplier and led to friendships with notable auto magnates.

Fisher made millions when partner James A. Allison and he sold their Prest-O-Lite automobile headlamp business to Union Carbide.

Fisher staged an elaborate publicity stunt in which he attached a hot-air balloon to a white Stoddard-Dayton automobile and flew the car over downtown Indianapolis.

Thousands of people observed the spectacle and Fisher triumphantly drove back into town, becoming an instant media sensation.

Completed in 1913, it was built on Cold Spring Road between the estates of his two friends and Indianapolis Motor Speedway partners, James A. Allison and Frank H. Wheeler.

Unlike some of his friends and neighbors, Fisher built a large but simple house decorated primarily in yellow, his favorite color.

The loose rock track led to numerous crashes, fires, terrible injuries to race-car drivers and spectators, and deaths.

Undeterred, Fisher convinced the investors to install 3.2 million paving bricks, leading to the famous nickname "the brickyard".

The speedway reopened, and on Memorial Day, May 30, 1911, 80,000 spectators paid the $1 admission (and many thousands more unpaid in overlooking buildings and trees) and watched the 500-mile (800 km) event, the first in a long line of races known as the Indianapolis 500.In 1913, foreseeing the automobile's impact on American life, Fisher conceived and was instrumental in the planning, development, and construction of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, which connected New York City to San Francisco.

Fellow industrialists Frank Seiberling and Henry Bourne Joy helped Fisher with their promotional skills, together creating the Lincoln Highway Association.

One of the young Army officers was Dwight David Eisenhower, then a lt. colonel, who credited the experience when supporting construction of the Interstate Highway System when he became President of the United States in 1952.

In September 1916, Fisher and Indiana Governor Samuel M. Ralston attended a celebration opening the roadway from Indianapolis to Miami.

[14] Although a dedicated enthusiast of automobile travel, Fisher was aware that wealthy vacationers in those days often preferred to cross the long distances to southeastern Florida by railroad, a tradition begun by some families years earlier with Henry M. Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) and the resorts he established at places like St. Augustine and Palm Beach, and eventually Miami, the southern terminus of the FEC, where he built the well-known and later infamous Royal Palm Hotel.

Around 1926, Florida Power and Light acquired Fisher's streetcar system, and expanded it, double tracking the line across the causeway.

Ever the innovative promoter, Fisher seemed tireless in his efforts to draw attention to Miami Beach, a story recounted by PBS.

[14] In 1921, he got free publicity all across the country with what would be called today a promotional "photo-op" of Rosie serving as a "golf caddy" for vacationing President-elect Warren Harding.

[14] During the Florida land boom of the 1920s, real-estate sales took off as Americans discovered their automobiles and the paved Dixie Highway, which through no coincidence led to the foot of the Collins Bridge.

He had bought another 200 acres (0.81 km2) that now form Fisher Island from Dana A. Dorsey, South Florida's first African American millionaire, and had begun some development there in 1919.

The Miami Yacht Club that Fisher built in 1924 was later converted into a private mansion that was extensively renovated in 2017; the property was on the market for $65 million in May 2018.

His project at Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island in New York was to provide a warm-season counterpart to the Florida development.

[26] Fisher died July 15, 1939, at age 65, of a stomach hemorrhage in a Miami Beach hospital, following a lengthy illness compounded by alcoholism.