On the evening of September 2, 1935, one of the most intense hurricanes ever recorded to hit the United States made landfall in the Upper Florida Keys.  
Small, fast, and ferociously powerful, the Labor Day Hurricane struck near Long Key and Craig Key as a Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds estimated at 185 mph. A barometer recovered in the Upper Keys read 892 millibars — the lowest pressure ever recorded at landfall in the U.S. 

The storm had formed east of the Bahamas on August 29 and intensified with terrifying speed over the warm Florida Straits. In 1935 there were no reconnaissance aircraft, no satellites, and no computer models. By the time forecasters grasped the danger, residents of the low-lying Matecumbe Keys had only hours to prepare.

A storm surge estimated at more than 18 feet swept across Long Key, Lower Matecumbe and Upper Matecumbe. Islamorada was virtually obliterated. Buildings disintegrated, and boats, cars, trees, and sections of railroad were carried into Florida Bay. 

In the storm's direct path were federal work camps housing hundreds of World War I veterans. Unemployed during the Great Depression, many had been part of the Bonus Army movement seeking early payment of wartime compensation. In 1934-35 they were sent to the Keys by the Florida Emergency Relief Administration to build bridges and grade for what would become the Overseas Highway. The camps offered work but almost no hurricane protection.

On Labor Day, federal officials requested an evacuation train from the Florida East Coast Railway. Assembling a crew on the holiday and debris already on the tracks caused fatal delays. The train reached Islamorada at nearly the same moment as the eye wall.

The surge lifted the passenger cars off the tracks. The heavy locomotive stayed upright, but the train could go no farther. About 400 veterans were in the camps; around 260 of them were killed. 

Men tried to shelter in flimsy barracks, under boxcars, or along the railroad embankment. Nothing held. Bodies were found tangled in mangroves and scattered for miles along the shore. Some were never recovered. The official death toll was listed at 408, though later studies place the total between 408 and 600. 

The tragedy became a national scandal. Ernest Hemingway, living in Key West, helped with recovery efforts and published the furious essay "Who Murdered the Vets?" in *New Masses*, arguing the men had been left in danger and evacuated too late. Federal officials said the storm's rapid intensification made timely evacuation impossible.   
Investigations followed, but the question of responsibility never fully faded.  
Recovery was grim. In the September heat, public-health officials ordered mass cremations near Snake Creek. 

Photographs in the Florida Memory collection document the wrecked evacuation train, the cremations, and the ruins.

The hurricane also destroyed about 42 miles of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway Key West Extension, the celebrated "Over-Sea Railroad" completed in 1912. The bankrupt railroad never rebuilt. Florida later purchased the bridges and right-of-way for the Overseas Highway. Rusting bridge piers and sections of the old railway still stand beside U.S. 1.

In 1937, the Works Progress Administration built the Florida Keys Memorial at MM 81.5 in Islamorada from native coral limestone. Its frieze depicts palm trees bending in the wind before a tidal wave.

The inscription reads:  
*"Dedicated to the memory of the civilians and war veterans whose lives were lost in the hurricane of September second, 1935."*

In front lies a crypt containing commingled remains and a tiled map of the Keys. It was unveiled on November 14, 1937 by 9-year-old survivor Faye Marie Parker, whose family's home had been destroyed. About 4,000 people attended the dedication. The memorial was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. 

The Labor Day Hurricane forced improvements in hurricane forecasting, warning, and evacuation. The broken railway, the Islamorada monument, and the veterans' unfinished bridge piers still remind us that this was not only a storm of extraordinary natural power, but a human disaster, men waiting for a rescue train that arrived too late.

The Labor Day Hurricane Destroys the Upper Florida Keys