Ghost Train

The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was a deadly Category 5 storm that left death and destruction in its wake. The intense hurricane caused extreme damage in the upper Florida Keys. Craig Key, Long Key, and Upper Matecumbe and Lower Matecumbe Keys suffered the worst. In this area, hundreds of bodies were caught in wreckage and mangrove thickets along the shore. Three days after the storm, corpses had swelled and split open in the subtropical heat. Public health officials ordered plain wood coffins holding the dead to be stacked and burned in several locations.

Dead bodies being hauled away after hurricane

In total, at least 423 people were killed by the hurricane. Bodies were recovered as far away as Flamingo and Cape Sable on the southwest tip of the Florida mainland. In a fortunate coincidence, about 350 of the 718 veterans living in the Keys work camps were in Miami to attend a Labor Day baseball game when the storm hit. If not for this outing, many more of the men, whose barracks in the Keys were flimsy shacks, would surely have been killed by the storm.

However, many veterans were not so lucky. The main transportation route linking the Florida Keys to mainland Florida was a single railroad line, the Florida Overseas Railroad portion of the Florida East Coast Railway. An evacuation train was sent from Homestead to rescue a group of World War I veterans but the train was washed off the track soon after reaching the stricken area. The train was trying to rescue 683 World War I veterans in a rehabilitation camp, of which around 250 died as a result of the hurricane. The veterans, a remnant of the Bonus Army that marched on Washington, were employed for highway construction in the federal work relief project and were building a new road bridge in the upper Keys. The federal government had an arrangement with the Florida East Coast Railway to provide a train to evacuate the men. However, due to miscommunication between the government and the railway, government officials believed that a train could be readied and sent to the Keys from mainland Florida more quickly than was the case. An official investigation conducted by Aubrey W. Williams cleared those responsible of any wrongdoing, categorizing the tragedy as an unfortunate act of God.

However, Ernest Hemingway, who toured the Matecumbes two days after the storm, harshly blamed the government for the men's death and in the September 17, 1935 issue of The New Masses magazine he wrote, "You're dead now brother, but who left you there in the hurricane months on the Keys where a thousand men died before you when they were building the road that's washed out now? Who left you there? And what's the punishment for manslaughter now?"

The destroyed railroad was never rebuilt, but temporary bridges and ferry landings were under construction as soon as materials arrived, and within a few years a roadway, the Overseas Highway, linked the entire Keys chain to mainland Florida. But not even ripping up the tracks of the railway could stop the doomed transport train from trying to complete its mission.

Several residents have reported the rumblings and whistle of a train on tracks long gone. One local man recounts an incident that still causes a shiver to race down his spine some 40 years later. He recalls as a boy of 12 deciding to head down to his favorite fishing spot. He grabbed his pole and headed out. His younger brother wanted to join him and asked if he could come along. Tommy couldn’t say no to his little brother and the two boys headed off to the old abandoned railroad bridge. They didn’t venture very far out because a huge section of the bridge had been blown away during the hurricane of 1935.

It didn’t matter though, the fish the boys were after gathered near the pilings closest to the shore. The fish were biting and the boys were busy reeling in one catch after another. Bruised clouds gathered in the distance. Flashes of lightning soon filled the air. The smell of ozone hung around the boys and they knew they were in trouble. The two brothers had barely enough time to reel in their lines before the skies opened and claps of thunder boomed and rolled across the sky. Lightning began to strike all around them and desperately seeking refuge from the fury of the storm the two boys crawled under the railroad bridge that once carried Flagler’s train from Homestead to Key West. As the storm intensified the boys scurried further back into the recess where the bridge and shoreline met. As the storm’s winds whipped and howled through the steel trusses of the bridge, the boys heard a distant rumbling. At first they thought it was thunder, but the noise grew louder and the bridge began to vibrate.

“Tommy what is it!”

“I don’t know I can’t see anything.”

Tommy peered out from beneath the bridge just in time to catch a glimpse of a roaring locomotive, its bright head light piercing the gloom of the storm. Over the claps of thunder a high pitched whistle alerted the boys of its presence.

“Tommy, what’s a train doing on this bridge? It’s gonna crash!”

Frantic, Tommy knew he had to stop the train before it plummeted into the ocean but couldn’t emerge from the shelter of the bridge or he would be struck by lightning. The train continued down the tracks and the boys could do nothing but sit in horror awaiting the inevitable crash. The rumbling grew louder, the train whistle blasted, the boys covered their ears and squeezed their eyes shut and then all of a sudden, there was silence. The storm had moved on and there was no sign of the train. It was as if the train had vanished into thin air.

Is it possible the doomed train dispatched in 1935 to save the trapped veterans from the deadly Labor Day hurricane is trying to fulfill its mission? A word of warning, if you should encounter a train near Islamorada, you may not want to board, if you do, make sure you have packed enough clothes for a very long journey.