The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane: Untold Heroism
The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane devastated the Florida Keys, yet many Americans don’t know about the secret evacuation railroad and the forgotten veterans it was built to protect.
In early September 1935, as summer drew to a close and most Americans prepared to return to their routines, a monstrous hurricane barreled through the Atlantic, making landfall in the Florida Keys on Labor Day. Now known as the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, it remains one of the most intense storms to ever strike the United States, but the true story of its devastation—and the people it affected—is largely unknown to all but a handful of historians.
During the Great Depression, hundreds of World War I veterans, desperate for work and a sense of purpose, were recruited to build up the Overseas Highway and refurbish the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway. The government set up camps on remote islands, promising steady pay in exchange for grueling labor under the subtropical sun. These men, many of whom had marched in the Bonus Army protests just three years prior, hoped this employment might also curry favor for the early payment of their promised bonuses.
On August 31, 1935, as the barometers plunged and the wind picked up, rumors of a dangerous storm circulated through the camps. Yet, warnings from the Weather Bureau were slow and sometimes contradictory. Communication lines were unreliable, and with little precedence for hurricanes of such intensity, the urgency didn’t truly register with authorities in Miami or Washington, D.C. By the time officials decided to evacuate the veterans, the hurricane was already bearing down with historic ferocity.
A desperate telegram was sent to the Florida East Coast Railway: send a rescue train, immediately. The orders traveled slowly as wires were downed by gusts and flooding. It was late on September 2nd when a special evacuation train finally left Miami, pushed by a pair of heavy steam engines. The train struggled south, inching across the 113-mile stretch of tracks that skimmed the surface of the Atlantic on low bridges and embankments.
As the train drew nearer, the storm reached its apex. Wind speeds well over 180 miles per hour lashed the Keys. The barometric pressure plummeted to 892 millibars, among the planet’s lowest ever measured. Massive storm surges swallowed the islands, tossing boxcars and locomotives from tracks like toys. By the time the evacuation train reached Islamorada, it was nearly too late. Many veterans had already crowded onto platforms, clutching bags and each other, hoping for salvation. In seconds, a fifteen-foot wall of water surged over the island, derailing the train and washing away the cars.
Most of the railroad crew survived by clinging to debris in the monstrous winds. The veterans—and many local residents who had joined them—weren’t so lucky. More than 400 perished, with bodies swept out to sea or tangled in mangroves across the islands. For weeks after, the search for remains persisted as the stench of rot and seawater hung in the air.
The internal investigation that followed was muffled by bureaucracy and political embarrassment. Few officials wanted to acknowledge the inadequate warnings, incomplete evacuation efforts, and the near-sacrificial use of the veterans for make-work jobs in such a treacherous location. Many families never received satisfactory explanations.
Perhaps most tragically, the devastated railway, once an engineering marvel linking the mainland to Key West over open water, was so badly damaged that it was never rebuilt. The Florida East Coast Railway sold the remnants to the state, and the remains of the railroad bridges became part of the Overseas Highway—still in use today, though most who drive across it are unaware of the disaster etched into its foundation.
In the years since, the story of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane has faded. The memorial at Islamorada lists the dead, heads uncovered and names etched in marble, but few visitors read beyond the brief markers. The veterans, having served their country first on European battlefields and again on windswept railroad embankments in the Keys, drifted from public memory alongside the sunken coaches and rotting camps.
The hurricane’s legacy includes modern hurricane tracking and evacuation protocols, disasters which changed how the government communicates weather threats, and even influenced how American veterans are treated. Yet it remains a chapter of U.S. history largely unknown to new generations—a story of nature’s force, missed warnings, and the kind of heroism that too often goes unsung.
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