Hurricanes

Hurricanes are a fact of life for Floridians, and those living in Pompano have not been exempted from their ravages. In 1906, two years before the town was incorporated, a hurricane hit the settlement with such power that one resident claimed it was many years before anyone built a two-story house in the area. In 1926, a monstrous hurricane came ashore in Miami, with winds strong enough to cause destruction as far north as Pompano. Two years later, West Palm Beach took a direct hit from a hurricane strong enough to damage a number of Pompano’s larger buildings. However, it can be argued that no hurricane had the long-term impact on Pompano Beach as did the stormy double-punch of 1947.

On September 10, 1947, military reconnaissance plane detected a hurricane in the Atlantic. It soon became apparent that it was heading for Florida. After stalling for a day over the Bahamas, the powerful hurricane came ashore on Florida's east coast on September 17th, between Pompano and Fort Lauderdale. At the Hillsboro Lighthouse, the wind was recorded as high as 155 miles per hour. A storm surge as high as eleven feet was reported along the coast as the hurricane first made landfall, and large stretches of highway A1A were washed out by the waves.

Even through hurricane preparation and building codes had been improved since destructive hurricanes of the 1920’s, wind damage was extensive. As with other hurricanes, this was often due to tornadoes that were spawned by the larger storm. The slow-moving storm also dropped a tremendous amount of rain over southern Florida, flooding low-lying areas.

Less than a month later, Pompano was in the path of another hurricane. This one came from the southwest, entering Florida at Cape Sable and traveling across the Everglades. At about 3:00 am on October 12th, the hurricane's eye passed directly over the Hillsboro Inlet. Compared to the hurricane that hit in September, this storm was rather weak; except for a few gusts, winds were recorded at less than 90 miles per hour.

There was not a lot of wind damage from this hurricane; weaker structures had already been damaged or destroyed in the previous storm. Like its immediate predecessor, the October hurricane was wet, dropping up to 13 inches of rain along its path. There was nowhere for the water to go and the entire southern portion of Florida, from Osceola County to the bottom of the peninsula, resembled a giant lake.

In Pompano Beach, virtually the only land above water was the land around the coastal ridge. The land that ran north to south and contained the Florida East Coast Railway tracks, the Dixie Highway and contiguous business and residential areas. A few days after the hurricane had hit, local resident Bud Garner was able to get a bird’s-eye view of its impact: “My friend, Duane Howell, a licensed pilot had access to a J3 Piper cub airplane and we decided to take a ride out over the glades and see for ourselves what it looked like. Leaving Pompano’s airport and heading West following Hammondville Road as best we could. We were shocked at the sight of all that water. Looking west and south as far as the eye could see, nothing but water.

“As we flew over the Pompano housing project, there were all those houses with water flowing into the windows.…The picture did not change as we went further west; again, nothing but water and occasionally the top of houses. One of the more striking aspects of this scene was after getting to US 441 and turning south, we could only see the bridges spanning [canals] for a short distance, then nothing but water until we sighted another bridge and the same sequence. We flew out west toward US 27 and we were unable to find the highway – it was gone, underwater.

“This hurricane kept South Florida immobile for the better part of six weeks before it dried out enough for farmers to plow and plant their fields, before funeral homes could bury the dead that had been kept in cold storage and for things to dry out.”

In response to the disastrous flooding of 1947, the U.S. Congress passed legislation creating the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project in 1948. The following year, the Florida Legislature created the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District, the predecessor to the South Florida Water Management District, to manage the huge project being designed and built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

This initiative employed levees, water storage, channel improvements, and large-scale pumping to supplement gravity drainage of the Everglades. It also created a 100-mile perimeter levee to separate the Everglades from urban development, effectively eliminating 160 square miles of Everglades that had historically extended east of the levee to the coastal ridge. These and other projects were undertaken primarily for flood control, to support agriculture, and to provide dry land for residents. They also led to severe ecological consequences that would plague South Florida to this day.

The new water control infrastructure helped moderate the extremes of flooding and droughts, and farmers were able to extend their fields farther to the west. The result was expanded harvests; year after year, the State Farmers Market reported record volumes. In 1950, market manager John L. Warren announced that the Pompano Beach facility had handled nearly 5,000,000 packages of vegetables at a total value of $12,679,371. The volume was a record, but the revenue was actually down a bit from the previous year. Some placed the blame on bad weather, but as the trend continued it became obvious that there was a problem.

The expansion of farmland had not resulted in an expansion in the variety of crops planted. Without diversification, local farmers were especially vulnerable to changes that impacted a few major crops, such as beans and peppers. Increases in local acreage and harvesting, as well as more competition from farms outside South Florida, led some agricultural leaders to advocate drastic measures. Market manager G. B. Hogan viewed the situation as one in which supply had outstripped demand: "Farmers have reached a saturation point in developing acreage and lower production is the only answer. Sometimes two of something is not worth as much as one."

While Pompano Beach's farmers were expanding farmland, others were looking at the new, dry land for other purposes. In addition to South Florida's warm winters, the advent of affordable residential air-conditioning and community-wide mosquito control greatly increased the appeal of living in southern Florida.

As people kept coming to Florida, developers were building as fast as possible and many vacant areas within the existing city limits were filling up. Moreover, the idea of building their own totally new community appealed to some businessmen. The only place the necessary land was available, though, was to the west where Pompano’s farmers were growing beans, peppers and other winter vegetables. Something would have to give.