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| Cruises from Galveston,
Texas |
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Destination:
Galveston Texas Cruises |
Galveston Texas Area
Although Galveston Island has been occupied since the early 1500s, the
city was not created until 1836, when Canadian Michel Menard purchased a
league and labor of land for $50,000 from the Austin Colony. Because
of the need for more money to promote the town, Menard took on nine
partners, forming the Galveston City Company. The first buildings were
prefabricated houses from Maine, one of which still stands today. The
Republic of Texas quickly made the fledgling city a port of entry, and
the Strand area filled with wholesalers, cotton agents and merchants.
The city flourished.
Galveston holds many firsts for the state of Texas: first post office,
naval base, and bakery, first chapter of the Masonic Order, first cotton
compress, insurance company, gas lights, electric lights, opera house,
orphanage, telephone, medical college and school for nurses. One of
Galvestons newspapers, the Galveston News, is the oldest daily
newspaper in the state (now known as the Galveston County Daily News).
Then disaster struck. On September 8, 1900, the deadliest hurricane in
US history swept across the island, killing more than 6,000 people and
destroying the majority of buildings in its path.
Most people probably would
have given up and left, but not the determined Galvestonians. They
decided to rebuild, but to do so in a way to reduce the likelihood of
such a disaster being repeated. Their answer was to build a seawall
seven miles long and 17 feet high and to raise the grade of the entire
town. The grade-raising took eight years to complete and involved
jacking up homes and pouring four to six feet of sand beneath them.
Residents used elevated wooden sidewalks to navigate the town during
this process. The seawall project was not completed until 1962, and is a
noted feat of engineering an example of how a city should respond
after disaster.
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