Belle Glade and the hurricane
On the night of September 16, 1928, a hurricane of catastrophic force struck the farming community of Belle Glade, Florida, sitting at the southern edge of Lake Okeechobee, and nearly erased the town entirely from the map. The storm remains the deadliest disaster in Belle Glade's history, reshaping the town forever and leaving behind a legacy that continues to influence how engineers, planners, and residents across South Florida think about flood control, lake management, and hurricane preparedness to this day. Located approximately 40 miles west of Palm Beach, Belle Glade occupies a position of geographic vulnerability that has defined its relationship with storms, water, and survival across nearly a century of recorded history.[1]
Background: Belle Glade and Lake Okeechobee
Belle Glade developed as an agricultural community on the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee, a vast and shallow inland lake that dominates the center of the Florida peninsula. The fertile muck soils surrounding the lake drew farmers and laborers seeking to cultivate sugarcane, vegetables, and other crops in the warm subtropical climate. The town grew quickly as an economic hub of the Glades region, drawing workers and settlers into land that, while extraordinarily productive, sat at or below the water level of the lake itself.
This proximity to Lake Okeechobee was both the foundation of Belle Glade's agricultural prosperity and the source of its greatest vulnerability. The lake is separated from the towns along its southern shore by earthen dikes, and the integrity of those structures has always stood between human settlement and potential inundation. The tension between economic development in the lowlands and the risks posed by the lake has shaped the region's politics, infrastructure debates, and emergency planning for generations.[2]
The Great Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928
The storm that struck on September 16, 1928 — later known as the Great Okeechobee Hurricane — arrived with winds and a storm surge of extraordinary violence. The fierce winds pushed the waters of Lake Okeechobee southward with enormous force, breaching the earthen dikes that were meant to protect the communities on the lake's southern rim. The water that poured through swept across the flatlands where Belle Glade and neighboring settlements stood, destroying structures and killing a devastating number of residents and farm workers.[3]
The disaster is counted among the worst natural disasters in United States history.[4] The scale of destruction in Belle Glade was so complete that the town barely survived as a functioning settlement in the immediate aftermath. Researchers and historians have continued to study the event for its human, engineering, and environmental dimensions, recognizing it as a turning point not only for the Glades region but for the entire state of Florida's approach to water management and storm preparedness.[5]
A statue in Belle Glade commemorates the disaster, depicting a family in flight from the rising floodwaters — a monument to the hundreds or thousands of victims who perished when the lake's dike gave way.[6] The Great Okeechobee Hurricane remains, in the collective memory of Belle Glade's residents, the defining catastrophe against which all subsequent storms and risks are measured.[7]
Towns Lost: The Hurricane's Broader Destruction
The 1928 hurricane did not only transform Belle Glade; it erased other communities entirely. The small settlement of Fruitcrest, built on land southeast of Belle Glade, was destroyed completely by the storm. The land on which Fruitcrest stood had been purchased for a remarkably small sum, and after the hurricane struck, the town ceased to exist. Any structural remains of Fruitcrest that may have survived the storm are today buried beneath the earth, making it one of the ghost towns of Palm Beach County.[8]
The destruction of Fruitcrest illustrates the broader pattern of the hurricane's impact across the lowlands south of Lake Okeechobee, where small farming communities, labor camps, and homesteads were swept away with little trace. The 1928 storm did not simply damage these places; it removed them from the landscape altogether, reordering the human geography of the entire region.
Aftermath and Rebuilding
In the years following the 1928 disaster, the state and federal governments undertook significant engineering projects to reduce the risk of future catastrophic flooding along Lake Okeechobee's shores. The construction and eventual strengthening of the Herbert Hoover Dike, which encircles the lake, was a direct consequence of the failures exposed by the Great Okeechobee Hurricane. Belle Glade itself was rebuilt, and the community resumed its role as an agricultural center, though the memory of the storm never faded from local consciousness.
The hurricane reshaped Belle Glade forever — not only physically, but socially and culturally. Decisions about where to build, how to construct flood barriers, and how to evacuate residents in an emergency were all conditioned by what happened in September 1928. The disaster prompted generations of residents to remain acutely aware of the lake's power and the fragility of the dike system separating their homes from billions of gallons of water.
Ongoing Vulnerability: The Dike Question
Decades after the 1928 hurricane, the question of whether the Herbert Hoover Dike can withstand a major storm continues to define debates about safety in the Belle Glade area. A stretch of approximately 68 miles along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee — centered on Belle Glade — has been identified as the area of maximum concern in engineering assessments of the dike's structural integrity.[9]
Experts and journalists have described Lake Okeechobee during hurricane season as a latent hazard of enormous proportion, with the aging dike standing as the sole barrier between the lake and the populated communities below. The Washington Post described the situation in terms that reflect a concern shared by engineers and emergency managers: that a sufficiently powerful hurricane striking at the right angle could breach the dike as it was breached in 1928, releasing the lake's waters across the farms and towns of the southern Glades.[10]
This ongoing concern has shaped emergency management protocols for the region, influencing evacuation planning and public communication strategies whenever a significant hurricane threatens South Florida. When Hurricane Floyd approached the Southeast coast in 1999, more than 500 people gathered at the auditorium of Glades Central High School in Belle Glade to receive information and prepare for a potential emergency, reflecting both the community's awareness of its exposure and its organized response to storm threats.[11]
Agriculture, Climate, and New Threats
While the 1928 hurricane remains the most dramatic storm event in Belle Glade's history, the town's agricultural economy has faced other storm-related pressures in the decades since. Hurricane Irma, which struck Florida in 2017, demonstrated how major storms can affect the region's farms through mechanisms beyond direct wind damage. Massive storm surge from Irma pushed ocean water from Biscayne Bay up into the canal drainage system, flooding farm fields with saltwater and rendering productive land temporarily unusable. One farmer lost a 350-acre farm field to saltwater intrusion caused by the storm.[12]
These pressures illustrate that the threat posed by storms to Belle Glade's agricultural economy operates through multiple pathways — not only the catastrophic dike failures of 1928, but also saltwater intrusion, drainage system disruption, and the cumulative effects of increasingly severe weather events. The farming communities of the Glades region have adapted repeatedly to storm-related disruption across their history, but the scale of ongoing environmental change presents challenges that existing infrastructure may not be equipped to handle indefinitely.
Memory and Commemoration
The 1928 hurricane occupies a permanent place in Belle Glade's civic identity. The statue depicting a family fleeing floodwaters serves as a public monument to the dead and a reminder to the living of the catastrophic potential that Lake Okeechobee represents whenever a powerful storm approaches.[13] Local organizations, historical groups, and community forums regularly revisit the events of 1928 as a way of honoring those who perished and maintaining awareness of the town's precarious but resilient position beside the lake.[14]
The disaster of 1928 also carries broader historical significance for the state of Florida, prompting legislative action, federal investment in flood control infrastructure, and ongoing debate about how best to manage the risks of a large, shallow lake surrounded by heavily populated and agriculturally productive lowlands. For Belle Glade, the hurricane is not a distant historical footnote but an active presence in local planning, preparedness, and community memory.