Galveston

GALVESTON, located on the northeast part of Galveston Island, a narrow strip of land along the Gulf of Mexico roughly fifty miles southwest of Houston, is the oldest continuously settled area in Texas (since 1745). Spanish explorers named the island after the governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, in the late 1700s. After briefly serving as the capital of the Republic of Texas in 1836, much of the land was purchased by Michel B. Menard, who established a post office and customs house, platted the modern city, and incorporated it in 1839. Railroad construction arrived along with a causeway to the mainland in the 1840s, and Galveston served as the major cotton shipping point and port of entry to Texas. Disaster arrived on 8–9 September 1900, when one of the largest hurricanes on record struck, the resulting winds and storm surge obliterating much of the city and killing roughly six thousand people. The storm's aftermath brought the first commission government to the United States to manage the cleanup and to supervise the construction of a ten-mile seawall around the city. Galveston missed the 1901 Spindletop oil discovery that provided the economic boom to Houston, which eroded its neighbor's fortunes for the rest of the century despite its important port. The city has a land area of 46.2 square miles and a population of 57,247 in 2000, down from 59,070 in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bixel, Patricia Bellis, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner. Galveston and the 1900 Storm: Castastrophe and Catalyst. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.

Larsen, Erik. Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. New York: Crown, 1999.

Weems, John Edward. A Weekend in September. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1980.

Matthew L.Daley