In the summer of 1935, hundreds of veterans were camped in the Florida Keys building the Overseas Highway — 128 miles, 42 bridges, open water in every direction. Men who had been to France. Men who had been tear-gassed on Pennsylvania Avenue asking for a bonus their country had promised them. Men who had been drifting since Washington told them it didn't want them back.

A relief train was called on Labor Day, September 2nd. It left Miami at 4:25 in the afternoon, two and a half hours after the call. It arrived at Islamorada at 8:20 that night. By then the barometric pressure was the lowest ever recorded at landfall in the Western Hemisphere. The storm surge was twenty feet.

The train never made it back.

Some men didn't try to leave. The Keys were the first place in years that had felt like somewhere.

"Southernmost Point"

by Roz Stevens