HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
1937 coral crypt holding cremated remains of ~300 killed by the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the U.S. mainland
82050 Overseas Hwy, Islamorada, FL 33036
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Roadside monument; no admission charge.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat roadside pull-off just east of US-1
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1937 · Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 — strongest U.S. landfall by sustained wind speed · WWI Veterans Disaster (WPA camp casualties) · Cremation Crypt — remains of ~300 victims interred in monument · Florida East Coast Railway Overseas Railroad terminus
The Labor Day Hurricane of September 2, 1935 remains, by sustained wind speed, the most powerful tropical cyclone to reach U.S. shores. The National Weather Service estimated sustained winds of 185 mph and measured a central pressure of 892 millibars, the third-lowest ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. It struck the upper Florida Keys with almost no warning and essentially no time for evacuation.
The Florida East Coast Railway had placed approximately 695 World War I veterans in road-building camps along the Keys as part of a Depression-era relief program. The veterans were living in tent and wooden-barrack settlements on Matecumbe and Lower Matecumbe Keys, directly in the storm's path. A rescue train was dispatched from Miami on the afternoon of September 2, but it was too late — the storm surge, which reached an estimated 17 to 20 feet in some areas, swept eleven of the train's cars off the tracks before it could load passengers. Of the approximately 695 veterans in the camps, roughly 260 were killed. Total storm deaths across the Keys ranged from 408 to 485 by different official counts, with a significant number of civilians among the dead.
In the aftermath, Florida health officials imposed an emergency embargo requiring immediate burial or cremation of bodies to prevent disease spread. Approximately 174 bodies were cremated at multiple sites in the Keys between September 7 and November 1935. Another 109 were eventually interred at Woodlawn Park Cemetery in Miami.
On November 14, 1937, the Florida Emergency Relief Administration unveiled the Florida Keys Memorial just east of US-1 at mile marker 82 in Islamorada. The structure is built of native coral rock and features a bas-relief tile mural depicting palm trees bending in wind. A stone crypt at the base holds the cremated remains of approximately 300 of the dead. The FEC Railway's Overseas Railroad was never rebuilt after the storm; the roadbed was converted into the Overseas Highway, completed March 29, 1938, which today passes the monument.
Sources
The Florida Keys Memorial has no developed ghost-tour tradition. What it carries is the documented weight of a mass-casualty event compressed into a very small geography: a narrow island chain, a few hours, and hundreds of working men with no ability to flee.
Visitors to the monument occasionally describe the atmosphere around the coral crypt as qualitatively different from the ambient noise of the Overseas Highway. The monument is set close to US-1, which carries steady traffic, yet people stopping here describe the traffic sound fading when standing directly before the mural — a likely acoustic effect of the coral structure, though accounts frame it in more atmospheric terms.
Ernest Hemingway, living in Key West at the time of the storm, visited the camps after the hurricane and wrote a furious piece for New Masses titled 'Who Murdered the Veterans?', published September 17, 1935, that accused the federal government of criminal negligence in failing to evacuate the men. His account of what he found on Matecumbe Key became one of the more vivid primary documents of the disaster and is sometimes cited by visitors who come specifically for the historical connection to Hemingway's outrage rather than any supernatural tradition.
A roadside stop at the 1937 coral-rock monument erected in memory of the approximately 300 people — most of them World War I veterans employed in WPA road construction camps — killed by the Labor Day Hurricane of September 2, 1935. The crypt beneath the bas-relief tile mural holds their cremated remains.
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