12. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926
For most of the nation the Great Depression began with the stock market collapse in October 1929, but in south Florida the economic downturn began in the aftermath of the hurricane which struck on September 18, 1926. It was the deathblow to the land boom which Florida enjoyed during the 1920s and destroyed thousands of acres of crops. Many recent arrivals to the state left in the aftermath of the storm, taking with them their savings, bringing hundreds of small banks to the edge of bankruptcy. The death toll was estimated to have been as high as 550, and the economic damage, when adjusted for inflation, makes the storm the second worst in American history.
The storm made two additional landfalls after sweeping across the tip of the Florida peninsula, one in Alabama and a second in Mississippi. In Florida, Lake Okeechobee created a storm surge which destroyed the nearby town of Clewiston, washed away levees and dikes, and placed Moore Haven under a flood of up to fifteen feet of water. Nearly all of the town’s buildings were driven off their foundations by the surging water, and more then 150 bodies were found in the wreckage in the aftermath of the storm. After entering the Gulf of Mexico the storm pummeled the city of Pensacola with hurricane force winds for more than twenty hours, and Pensacola bay found nearly all of its waterfront destroyed.