The Labor Day Hurricane Devastates the Florida Keys

September 2, 1935 — A Category 5 hurricane destroys communities, veterans' camps, and the Overseas Railway

On the evening of September 2, 1935, one of the most intense hurricanes ever to strike the United States crossed the Florida Keys near Islamorada. The storm's winds, waves, and powerful surge devastated a narrow chain of islands where residents, railroad workers, and hundreds of World War I veterans had little protection and almost no time to escape.

The compact hurricane had intensified with extraordinary speed as it approached the Keys. Modern historical analysis classifies it as a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds estimated at approximately 185 miles per hour. A pressure of 892 millibars, or 26.35 inches of mercury, was measured near Long Key—the lowest pressure recorded in a hurricane at a United States landfall.

Veterans in the Path of the Storm

Among those caught in the hurricane were hundreds of World War I veterans living in federal work camps. During the Great Depression, the government had sent them to the Keys to work on bridges and other improvements along the highway route. Their camp buildings were not designed to withstand a hurricane of this strength.

Officials ordered an evacuation train from Miami, but delays slowed its journey south. The train reached the Islamorada area shortly before the storm's greatest surge struck. Water swept most of its cars from the tracks; only the locomotive and tender remained upright. The evacuation had come too late for many of the men in the camps.

The official death toll is generally recorded as 408, although the exact number has remained uncertain. Approximately 259 of the dead were veterans and other federal highway workers. The veterans' deaths provoked national outrage and difficult questions about the camps, the warnings, and the government's failure to move the men to safety sooner.

The End of Flagler's Overseas Railway

The hurricane also destroyed approximately 40 miles of the Florida East Coast Railway's Key West Extension. Often called Henry Flagler's Overseas Railway, the line had connected the mainland with Key West since 1912. It had taken years to build across open water and was celebrated as an engineering wonder.

The financially troubled railroad did not rebuild the damaged extension. The State of Florida later purchased much of its right-of-way and bridges for conversion into a highway. Portions of the old railroad bridges became part of the Overseas Highway, while surviving structures beside U.S. 1 still help tell the story of the railroad and the storm that ended it.

Hemingway and the Public Reckoning

Ernest Hemingway, then living in Key West, traveled through the devastated area after the hurricane. Angered by the deaths of the veterans, he wrote a sharply critical article titled “Who Killed the Vets?” His account helped turn the disaster into a national controversy over responsibility for the men who had been placed in the storm's path.

The tragedy was remembered not only as a natural disaster but also as a failure of preparation and evacuation. It demonstrated how a hurricane's human cost can be shaped by decisions made before the first destructive winds arrive.

The Florida Keys Hurricane Memorial

In 1937, the Florida Keys Hurricane Memorial was dedicated in Islamorada near the site of the disaster. The monument includes a crypt containing the cremated remains of victims and stands as a memorial to the veterans and civilians who died.

The Labor Day Hurricane permanently changed the Florida Keys. It took hundreds of lives, erased communities and work camps, ended one of Florida's most famous railroads, and left lessons about hurricane warnings and public responsibility that remain painfully relevant today.

Sources for Additional Reading

• National Hurricane Center: The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones.
• National Park Service: Florida Keys Memorial National Register Documentation.
• National Park Service: Overseas Highway and Railway Historical Documentation.