Sublime

A memorial was built by the Works Progress Administration in memory of the victims, atop a crypt containing the remains and ashes of about three hundred. The structure, in Islamorada at MM 81.5, was unveiled before a crowd of five thousand on November 14, 1937, by nine-year-old hurricane survivor Fay Marie Parker. “Dedicated to the memory of the ci

were a storm as powerful as the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 to strike Key West today, they say, the 22,000-person island would likely be wiped as clean of life and property as the Matecumbes were years ago. Were such a storm to strike a major population center such as Miami, property damage would likely outstrip Andrew one hundred times over.)

The official Red Cross death toll was 408, but most agreed that the official count was low, that the final tally would never be known, owing to an uncertain Keys census and a general laxity in FERA’s record keeping. The Islamorada coroner put the figure at 423, but many informed estimates quickly suggested the total was over 600, for many bodies of

The storm of 1906 had concentrated its fury on the Upper Keys, where most of the work ongoing at the time had been centered. The hurricane of 1909 had blasted the Middle Keys, where work had similarly progressed by that time. In 1910, as if guided by an especially malevolent hand, the storm turned its greatest intensity upon the Lower Keys, where u