Historical memory of the 1928 hurricane

The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane struck Palm Beach County on September 16, 1928, killing at least 3,000 people and reshaping the physical, social, and cultural landscape of the region for generations. For West Palm Beach and the surrounding communities, the storm left a wound that was slow to heal and even slower to be fully acknowledged. The historical memory of this disaster — how it has been recorded, commemorated, disputed, and at times suppressed — forms a distinct chapter in the city's identity. Decades after the floodwaters receded from Lake Okeechobee and the debris was cleared from the streets, questions about who died, where the dead were buried, and how the community chose to remember or forget continue to shape local civic life.

The Storm and Its Immediate Impact

The hurricane that struck Palm Beach County in September 1928 had already demonstrated its destructive power long before reaching Florida. The storm formed as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa on September 6, 1928, gathering strength as it moved westward across the Atlantic. By the time it reached the Caribbean, it had already earned the name "San Felipe the Second," part of a tradition of naming hurricanes after the saints' days on which they struck — a practice dating back to storms like "Hurricane Santa Ana" in 1825 and the original "San Felipe" in 1876.

The hurricane came ashore near the Jupiter Lighthouse and traveled west across Palm Beach County toward Lake Okeechobee, striking a wide swath of coastline from Boca Raton to Jupiter with the full force of a Category 4 storm. The death toll — at least 3,000 people — placed this hurricane among the deadliest natural disasters in American history, though the exact number has been contested by historians and community advocates for much of the intervening century. The storm also obliterated entire settlements. The small agricultural community of Fruitcrest, built on land southeast of Belle Glade that had originally cost just twenty dollars, was destroyed entirely by the hurricane; whatever physical remains may have survived lie buried beneath the earth today.

The destruction extended well beyond the immediate coastline. The surge of Lake Okeechobee, driven by hurricane-force winds, overwhelmed the earthen dike that surrounded much of its southern shore and sent a wall of water across the low-lying agricultural communities to the south and west. The majority of the lives lost were claimed not on the coast but inland, in these farming communities where many of the victims were Black migrant agricultural workers whose deaths received comparatively little official recognition at the time.

Racial Disparities in Commemoration

The racial dimension of the storm's legacy became among the most contested aspects of its historical memory in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County. The immediate aftermath exposed stark inequalities in how white and Black victims were treated. White victims were generally afforded individual burials and recorded in official documentation, while many Black victims were buried in mass graves, often without formal identification or markers.

among the most significant sites associated with this disparity is located in West Palm Beach itself, where a mass grave containing the remains of many Black hurricane victims was established in a segregated section of the city. For decades, this site received little civic attention or formal acknowledgment. The Historical Society of Palm Beach County has documented that the storm's death toll of at least 3,000 fell most heavily on the region's Black agricultural communities, a fact that remained obscured in mainstream historical narratives for much of the twentieth century.

Efforts to address this inequity gained momentum in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, driven by community organizations, descendants of survivors, and local historians. The push for formal memorialization brought renewed attention to the question of how many people actually died in the storm and how the demographic breakdown of victims should be understood and honored. These efforts also prompted larger conversations about the relationship between natural disaster and social vulnerability — specifically how pre-existing conditions of racial segregation, economic marginalization, and inadequate infrastructure determined who lived and who died when the storm struck.

Physical Evidence and Lost Landscapes

The hurricane's passage left lasting marks on the built environment of Palm Beach County, though many of these marks have been obscured by subsequent development. Communities that once occupied the agricultural lowlands surrounding Lake Okeechobee were never rebuilt. Fruitcrest is among the documented ghost towns of the region, its former location now absorbed into farmland, with no surface features remaining to indicate that a settlement once stood there. The erasure of these communities from the physical landscape contributed to the broader erasure of their residents from historical memory.

The storm also disrupted infrastructure across the region. Accounts from the period document dramatic scenes of destruction, including rescue trains washed from their tracks by the force of floodwaters — a type of catastrophic infrastructure failure that illustrated how thoroughly the storm overwhelmed the region's capacity to respond. The destruction of roads, rail lines, and communications networks isolated affected communities and delayed rescue and relief efforts for days.

In West Palm Beach itself, the storm caused significant damage, though the coastal city fared somewhat better than the inland agricultural communities. The Jupiter Lighthouse area, where the storm made landfall, bore the brunt of the initial impact before the hurricane tracked westward.

Commemoration and Historical Recognition

Formal efforts to commemorate the 1928 hurricane and its victims developed gradually over the decades following the storm. For much of the mid-twentieth century, the disaster occupied a relatively marginal place in Florida's public historical consciousness. The Historical Society of Palm Beach County has been a central institution in preserving and disseminating documentation of the storm, maintaining records and supporting research through its "The Storm of '28" project, which draws on historical photographs, survivor accounts, and official records to construct a more complete picture of what happened and who was affected.

Geospatial tools and digital mapping have also contributed to modern efforts to reconstruct the storm's path and impact. Interactive story maps documenting the hurricane's formation on September 6 off the coast of Africa, its westward track across the Atlantic, and its landfall on September 16 near Jupiter have made the historical record more accessible to the general public and to educators.

Anniversaries of the storm have served as occasions for public gatherings, memorial services, and renewed media attention. Community organizations and descendants of survivors have organized commemorative events, and the storm has been the subject of documentary films, academic scholarship, and journalistic retrospectives. These efforts have collectively elevated the 1928 hurricane from a largely regional footnote to a recognized chapter in the broader history of American natural disasters.

The Storm in Broader Context

Understanding how West Palm Beach remembers the 1928 hurricane also requires placing the event within the longer history of Atlantic hurricane activity. The tradition of naming storms after saints' days — which gave the 1928 storm the name "San Felipe the Second" — reflects a centuries-long human effort to categorize and make sense of catastrophic weather events. The fact that this storm shared its name with an 1876 predecessor points to cyclical patterns of destruction that communities in the hurricane belt have long had to contend with.

The 1928 storm also prompted lasting changes in infrastructure policy for the region. The inadequacy of the existing earthen dike around Lake Okeechobee was made devastatingly clear by the storm's consequences, and the subsequent construction of more substantial flood control infrastructure altered the hydrology of South Florida in ways that continue to shape the region's environment. These physical legacies are inseparable from the historical memory of the disaster itself.

Comparisons between the 1928 hurricane and more recent storms have become a recurring feature of disaster preparedness discourse in Florida. When major hurricanes approach the state, meteorologists and emergency managers frequently invoke the 1928 event as a reference point for the potential severity of surge and inland flooding events. The historical memory of the storm thus functions not only as an act of retrospective commemoration but as an active element in how residents and officials think about present-day risk.

Legacy in West Palm Beach

Within West Palm Beach, the 1928 hurricane occupies a specific place in the city's collective memory — present but not always prominently foregrounded, acknowledged but not yet fully reconciled. The storm killed thousands in the surrounding county, reshaped its agricultural economy, and exposed the racial fault lines of its society. That the majority of the dead were Black workers who received inadequate burial and minimal official documentation remains a source of ongoing civic reckoning.

Institutions including the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, local museums, and community organizations continue to work toward a fuller accounting of what the storm meant and who it affected. These efforts reflect a broader national pattern in which the histories of historically marginalized communities — often omitted or minimized in official records — are being recovered and integrated into the public record.

The 1928 hurricane is not only a historical event for West Palm Beach; it is a continuing conversation about memory, justice, and the obligations that communities bear toward those whose deaths shaped the world the living now inhabit.

See Also

• Lake Okeechobee
• Palm Beach County history
• Jupiter Lighthouse
• Hurricane preparedness in South Florida