The Labor Day hurricane of September 2, 1935, struck the Islamorada area after a series of weather bureau advisories beginning on August 31 warned of a small but intense storm moving west from the Bahamas toward the Florida Straits and the Keys. By 7:00 pm on Labor Day, hurricane warnings had been ordered north of Key Largo to Palm Beach, and at 8:30 pm the storm hit with an 18-foot storm surge and 200-mph winds, then the greatest hurricane ever at that time. The storm also caught the steamship S.S. Dixie as it headed for Miami, driving it onto French Reef off Key Largo and forcing a difficult rescue of its 231 passengers and 122 crew members. In the Matecumbe area, almost 600 World War I veterans working on government relief projects were awaiting evacuation by train to the mainland, but delays from an opened bridge, reversing the engine at Homestead, and debris and a loose cable on Windley Key slowed the rescue. When the train reached Islamorada station at 8:08 pm, only minutes remained before the hurricane struck; the storm surge extinguished the engine fire and overturned all the cars except the engine and tender. The hurricane produced the lowest barometer reading ever registered in this hemisphere, 26.35, destroyed nearly all of Islamorada, and killed almost 500 people. Nearly 300 of the dead were buried in the hurricane monument at mile-marker 81.5, while the piers in the bay at mile-marker 73 in channel 2 also stand in memory of those who died. Entire families were devastated, including the Russell family, which was reduced from more than 50 members to 11, and many bodies were never recovered, while survivors gathered at the Rustic Inn, today's Green Turtle Inn, searching for others who lived through the storm.