Storms of yesterday that hit Gasparilla Island

BY MARILYN HOECKEL

A story from 1989 detailed some of the biggest storms to hit Boca Grande

Editor’s note: This was from an Aug. 4, 1989 edition of the Boca Beacon.

There are five big storms that seem to stand out in the memories of Gasparilla Island residents. The years of those storms are 1910, 1921, 1935, 1944, and 1960. Here are some islanders’ memories of each of those hurricanes:

1910: The late Carey Johnson wrote that this Oct. 17 hurricane reached an estimated 125 knots. He said the most serious damage was to the bank building under construction downtown. 

The brick walls were blown down, and the bricks were “all over the street the next morning.” He also related that some Cuban schooners ran aground half a mile northeast of Pelican Bayou. Two sailors drowned. Their bodies were recovered, and they were buried at Port Boca Grande.

Tommy Parkinson, a 60-year Boca Grande resident, said that his father told him some fishermen’s stilt houses on Punta Blanco were washed away. “Two of the men crossed the bay on the roof of one of ‘em,” he said.

1921: Albert Lowe of Grove City was living at Gasparilla Village (approximately where The Courtyard is now). He said that nearly all the homes on Cole Key (the last key before the island) were washed away in this storm. Clara Futch, also a resident of the fishing village, comprised of 15 to 20 families at that time, said, “The water was real high. I had fishing boats tied to my front porch.” 

Tommy Parkinson said the 1921 hurricane was the only storm he remembers that came out of the Gulf. “That one wasn’t so bad as far as wind went, but there was a big tide.” He was seven years old at the time and living in Charlotte Harbor. He said quite a few homes there were washed away and that everyone weathered the storm in the Charlotte Harbor schoolhouse. Parkinson also said this storm brought water as high as it’s ever been on Gasparilla Island. He said that water lapped at the railroad tracks running through town. (Photo below of the Gasparilla Inn Bath House)

1935: One of the most devastating storms to ever hit South Florida (winds up to 200 mph), this one killed hundreds of people in the Keys and did massive damage there. Boca Grande fared much better, sustaining minor structural damage, downed trees, and power outages.

Clara and “Dunk” Futch were living in Placida by then. She remembers this as a bad storm. “The house floated up off its blocks and set right down again. It was bobbing around like a cork,” she said. “The wind was blowing so bad we couldn’t even make it to the fish house,” Clara said. She also remembers that a lot of people left and went to Arcadia.

Tommy Parkinson was out in Bull Bay with five other men when this storm came through. He said that they were afraid to go inside the building at their camp for fear it would come down around them. Instead, they spent several hours huddled under bushes. He said the sound made by the wind (he estimated it at 100 m.p.h.) was indescribable. Parkinson gives an idea of how fast tides can rise during a storm like this. “When we went to move our boats (to a safe cove), they were in one foot of water. By the time we had gone a quarter mile, the tide had risen four to five feet.”

1944: Sarah Tucker of Boca Grande was working at the Kozy Kitchen at East Avenue and 4th Street when this one hit. “A big timber from the old drugstore flew through the roof and went right through the bar,” she remembers. Sarah said that most of the people who did not leave the island stayed at the Boca Grande Hotel (where Boca Bay is now). She and about 15 others weathered the storm at the Depot. “We had to crawl on our hands and knees to get there,” she said.

This is the storm when Boca lost most of its tall trees. Tommy Parkinson relates, “Pines were crisscrossed everywhere downtown. A big one was laying across the tracks just beyond the depot. And a whole mile of railroad track was torn up near the Narrows (near the old ferry landing about a mile south of the county line).” Train traffic was halted for a week or two, he said, while the tracks were repaired. He also said two boxcars were derailed and moved by the wind about a block, to near Fourth Street.

1960: Hurricane Donna washed out the last bridge to the island. Sarah Tucker said they crossed to the mainland by boat and went to Wauchula, where the roof of the motel they were staying in blew off. Parkinson said there was not as much damage as from the ‘44 storm. “Just trees down and some roofs gone.”

Major hurricane hits

A list of some of the main hurricanes that have affected Boca Grande, compiled from National Weather Service and Beacon archives:

Oct. 17, 1910 – Unnamed, Category 3 (Florida Panhandle)

Oct. 21, 1921 – Unnamed, Category 3 (Tampa Bay area)

Sept. 18, 1926 – Great Miami Hurricane, Category 2 (Miami)

Sept. 17, 1928 – Okeechobee Hurricane, Category 2 (Lake Okeechobee area)

Sept. 2, 1935 – Labor Day Hurricane, Category 3 (Florida Keys)

Oct. 19, 1944 – Cuba-Florida Hurricane, Category 3 (Cuba and the Florida Panhandle)

Sept. 15, 1945 – Unnamed, Category 1 (Southwest Florida)

Sept. 17, 1947 – Fort Lauderdale Hurricane, Category 3 (Fort Lauderdale)

Sept. 5, 1950 – Hurricane Easy, Category 2 (Cedar Key)

Sept. 10, 1960 – Hurricane Donna, Category 1 (Florida Keys to Southwest Florida) 

Sept. 1, 1985 – Hurricane Elena, Category 3 (Gulf Coast, near Florida Panhandle)

Aug. 13, 2004 – Hurricane Charley, Category 4 (Cayo Costa). Other hurricanes that affected Florida that September included Francis, Jeanne and Ivan.

Sept. 28, 2022 – Hurricane Ian, Category 4 (Cayo Costa)

Aug. 5, 2024 – Hurricane Debby, Category 1 (Steinhatchee)

Sept. 26, 2024 – Hurricane Helene, Category 1 (Perry)

Oct. 9, 2024 – Hurricane Milton, Category unknown (Siesta Key)

Escape on a Seaboard Air Line train reminds of Keys tragedy  

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane

Editor’s Note: Perhaps the most famous hurricane disaster in Florida was in 1935, when in the Florida Keys a train filled with World War I veterans was swamped by an 18-foot storm surge. That 1935 Labor Day hurricane had winds of 200 m.p.h., and is remembered for destroying the Florida East Coast Railway, where hundreds of World War I veterans who had been camped in the Matecumbe area while working on the construction of U.S. Highway One for the Works Progress Administration were killed. In 1937 the cremated remains of approximately 300 people were placed within the tiled crypt in front of a monument. While the storm was not as bad here in Boca Grande, a similar situation story came from Carey Johnson, who wrote about the 1935 Hurricane. All island residents survived. Capt. Carey Johnson wrote about it in the Aug. 1, 1982 Port Briefs column. The photo at right is from the Florida Memory archives in Tallahassee.

Ashore, several of us had gathered in the store building at the foot of the dock, trying to decide where to take cover and ride out the hurricane, as by now the wind had reached full hurricane force and the rain limited visibility to less than 50 feet. The atmosphere was more like water than air.

A slight lull in the rain allowed us to see the passenger train pulling out of the side track and heading north an hour ahead of schedule. Mr. T. R. Crook, the local port agent who was with our group, jumped in his car, which was luckily not drowned out, and caught the train at the Boca Grande Depot when it stopped to pick up the mail and a few dozen families who had already gathered to make sure not to miss the only escape from the island. 

Mr. Crook prevailed upon the train crew to back the train down to the port and pick up the residents there who had been stranded by the early departure. So, this was done, and about 4 p.m., the train pulled out of the depot with its one-day coach and baggage coach loaded with people standing in the aisles. Without dispatcher’s orders, it slowly made its way north across the trestle as the wind rocked the hardy coaches with every gust. 

Those of us still gathered in the store building decided to seek better shelter when a large warehouse door on the windward side of the building blew in. We got into our cars and left, spending the night at the “Seaboard Cottage” (now the home of Mr. Frank Oliver on Park Avenue).

The next morning we found out what had happened. The Florida Keys had been hit by the worst hurricane in history.