South Florida’s ‘Perfect Storm’

On Sept. 2, 1935, the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the United States barreled into the Florida Keys with wind gusts of more than 200 m.p.h. Over two horrendous days, 100-ton railroad cars were hurled off their tracks, the famed “Overseas Railroad” that linked Key West to Miami was destroyed and more than 400 people died.

Though this was one of the great natural disasters of the 20th century, the first full-length account of what happened has only now become available in a new book, Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, by Willie Drye (National Geographic, $26). Drye, a contributor to many magazines, including American History, Florida Living and Historic Traveler, spent five years interviewing hurricane survivors and plowing through thousands of documents. His word-portrait of the storm’s awe-inspiring might should serve as a warning for all of us who tend to take the prospect of a hurricane too lightly.

The book is more than the tale of a “perfect storm,” however. The political fallout was tremendous, even threatening Franklin Roosevelt’s re-election in 1936. Of the 400 men, women and children who died, 253 were World War I veterans who had been hired to work on a New Deal project in the Keys. The public was outraged when it became known that the project’s administrators had delayed sending a train to pick up the men, leaving them at the mercy of the storm.

Read the entire article in the September 2002 issue