Hurricane of 1928
Posted by: 
JL_HSTRE
N 26° 48.970 W 081° 18.090
17R E 470038 N 2966109
Historical marker in Ortona Cemetery.
Waymark Code: WMJJ6Z
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 11/23/2013
Views: 21
The Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 was the most deadly hurricane ever to strike the state of Florida. An estimated 2500 persons in South Florida died when the storm came ashore on September 16, 1928 near the Jupiter Lighthouse and traveled west across Palm beach County to Lake Okeechobee. Many of the hurricane's fatalities, most of them migrant farm workers, occurred when the Lake Okeechboee dike was overwhelmed and the populated south side of the lake was flooded with a 15-20 ft storm surge. The floodwaters carried victims and survivors as far as ten miles from the lakeshore along nearly the entire south half of the lake, from Moore Haven to Pahokee. Noted Florida writer Zora Neale Hurston used the events surrounding the tragedy in her 1937 novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" as she described the recovery and burial of the dead. The Ortona Cemetery contains the unmarked graves of several hundred victims of the 1928 hurricane, as well as the victims of the 1926 hurricane that devasted Glades County. Several hundred African-American victims of the Okeechobee Hurricane were buried in a mass grave in the City of West Palm Beach's pauper cemetery.
A Florida Heritage Landmark sponsored by Representatives Denise Grimsley (2004-2012) & Joseph R. Spratt (1996-2004), Florida House of Representatives District 77, and the Florida Department of State.
F-748
2012
Other victims were buried in the cemetery in Port Mayaca east of the lake (WMHJ3). There is a memorial to victims in Belle Glade (WM5EYG).
Marker Number: F-748
Date: 2012
County: Glades
Marker Type: Roadside
Sponsored or placed by: Rep. Denise Grimsley, Rep. Joseph Spratt, & the Florida Department of State
Website: [Web Link]
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