The fact that the city of Galveston exists today is the triumph of imagination, hope and determination over reality. Perched precariously on a sand-barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston is subject to the whims of inevitable hurricanes.
One of those hurricanes, dancing its deadly way across the Gulf of Mexico in early September 1900, came very close to dealing the city a fatal blow. An estimated 6,000 residents died, and most structures in the city were destroyed or badly damaged. In terms of human life, it remains the worst natural disaster in United States history.
Galveston's leaders took several major steps to recover from the storm and to prevent a recurrence of the devastation. First, they developed a new form of municipal government, one with strong centralized control to handle the economic recovery of the city. Next, they built a massive seawall to turn back storm-generated waves. Perhaps the most amazing step they took was to raise the level of the entire city, by more than 16 feet in some areas, in order to keep flooding at a minimum.
Early History of the Island and the City
Galveston Island, one and one-half to three miles wide and 27 miles long, was part of the Karankawa Indians' territory before Europeans arrived. The first European to see the island was probably Spanish explorer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, who in 1519 surveyed the entire Gulf Coast from the Florida Keys to Veracruz for the Spanish government.
When Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on a Gulf island that he called Isla de Malhado (Island of Misfortune) in 1528, he may have been on Galveston Island. Other Spanish visitors called it San Luís or Isla de Culebras (Island of Snakes).
In 1785, José Antonio de Evia charted the coastline, naming the bay between island and mainland for Bernardo de Gálvez Gallardo, the viceroy of Mexico. Map makers later also applied the name to the island.
In 1816, Frenchman Louis Michel Aury became the first European to inhabit the island, and he attempted to establish a government. He was displaced by French pirate Jean Lafitte in mid-1817; Lafitte hung around the island until about 1820.
Probably the primary attraction to pirates and to the settlers who followed them was that the eastern end of Galveston Island was the best natural port between New Orleans and Veracruz. The government of Mexico built a small customshouse on the island in 1825 to create a port of entry. The Texas revolutionaries used the port of Galveston during the Texas war for independence from Mexico in 1835-36. After that war, Michel B. Menard, the French-Canadian for whom Menard County was named, acquired more than 4,000 acres at the harbor for a town. Menard and his associates in the venture called the town "Galveston" and began selling lots on April 20, 1838.
