The Florida Keys Memorial honors hundreds of American veterans and local citizens who died in the Great Hurricane of 1935, whose greatest force struck Islamorada on Labor Day, September 2, 1935, leaving hundreds dead, homes flattened, and the Florida East Coast Railway in ruins. Some of the first bodies were taken to Miami, while continued discoveries led to local cremation pyres, and victims' remains were found as far away as Florida Bay from Flamingo to Cape Sable; the search continued for more than a year, and many were never found. Many of the dead were unemployed World War I veterans who had come to the Keys in 1934 through Federal Emergency Relief Administration jobs paying a dollar a day plus room and board to help complete U.S. Highway One near the railroad, living in temporary camps near Islamorada after veterans seeking promised bonuses had faced hardship during the Great Depression. The memorial's crypt received the cremated remains of about 300 veterans and local citizens in 1937. Erected under the Florida Division of the Federal Arts Program of the Works Progress Administration, the monument was designed by WPA artists under William S. Wood, begun on July 19, 1937, and built of local keystone, a fossilized coral quarried in the Florida Keys, with a sculpted depiction of the storm's fury designed by Harold Lawson and executed by Lampert Bemlemans. Funded by the WPA and regional veterans' associations and sponsored by the Monroe County Commission in cooperation with the Monroe County School Board, it was dedicated on November 14, 1937, before nearly 5,000 spectators; after its unveiling by nine-year-old Faye Marie Parker, the remains of Herman Sauter, a World War I veteran from Philadelphia whose body had not been found until January 27, 1937, were placed in the crypt.