Episode Summary

On September 21, 1938, a Category 3 hurricane racing northward at sixty miles an hour blindsided the wealthy summer colony of Watch Hill, Rhode Island. With no radar, satellites, or modern forecasting, residents had almost no warning before a wall of water--estimated at fifty feet high--rolled over Fort Road's exclusive Napatree Point peninsula. Forty-two people were trapped in their Victorian summer cottages. Fifteen didn't survive. Those who lived rode debris across Little Narragansett Bay, clinging to floating roof sections as waves crashed over them.

The Fort Road Massacre, as locals would call it, wiped out an entire way of life in less than an hour. Thirty-nine cottages, the Yacht Club, the Beach Club, and a bathing pavilion--all destroyed. The families who had summered there for generations never rebuilt. Seven years later, in 1945, the Watch Hill Fire District purchased Napatree Point for ten thousand dollars and made a decision that still stands: the land would remain forever wild. Today, Napatree Point is an eighty-six-acre conservation area where piping plovers nest and visitors can walk where mansions once stood.

Timeline of Key Events

September 4, 1938: Hurricane forms near Cape Verde Islands off Africa

September 19, 1938: Storm reaches Category 5 strength near Bahamas

September 21, 1938 (10:00 AM): Washington Weather Bureau downgrades storm to tropical storm

September 21, 1938 (1:00 PM): Mrs. Camp's luncheon at Weekapaug; guests note "strange yellow light" over water

September 21, 1938 (3:00-4:30 PM): Hurricane strikes Fort Road; storm surge devastates peninsula

September 21, 1938 (6:00 PM): Winds die; Fort Road has ceased to exist

1945: Watch Hill Fire District purchases Napatree Point; no rebuilding permitted

Historical Significance

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 remains the most powerful and deadly to strike the region in recorded history, killing between six hundred and seven hundred people across Long Island and southern New England. Rhode Island suffered the worst casualties. The disaster exposed catastrophic gaps in the nation's weather forecasting infrastructure--a twenty-eight-year-old junior forecaster was the only meteorologist on duty when the storm made landfall because senior staff were at a conference.

The tragedy led directly to massive improvements in hurricane tracking and warning systems that Americans take for granted today. Providence completed the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in 1966. Coastal building codes were strengthened throughout New England. The decision to preserve Napatree Point as a wildlife refuge--made decades before such conservation efforts became common--stands as one of the first examples of managed retreat from a vulnerable coastal area. According to the Watch Hill Conservancy, the piping plover, a federally endangered species, now nests on the same barrier beach where Victorian mansions once stood.

Sources: Watch Hill Conservancy, PBS American Experience "Wake of '38", National Weather Service, Rhode Island Historical Society