DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. On the eighth of September, 1900, the Gulf of Mexico made its intentions perfectly clear. A hurricane and tidal wave hit Galveston with a force that destroyed much of the city and left six thousand people dead.
Six thousand. Let that number sit with you a moment on this road. It is not a small number.
It never will be. After a tragedy of that scale, the city of Galveston faced a choice — grieve and diminish, or grieve and rebuild. They chose to rebuild, and they chose to do it in a way that the Gulf would have a harder time undoing.
The city appointed a board of three engineers to figure out how. Now, one of those three names might catch your ear: Brigadier General Henry M. Robert, retired, born in 1837, who also happened to be the author of Robert's Rules of Order.
Alongside him sat Alfred Noble and H. C. Ripley.
Three engineers, one enormous problem. Their proposal was something audacious. It would be financed jointly by the city, the county, and the state governments, and work on it started in 1902.
First, they went after the elevation problem. Buildings across the entire city were jacked up — literally lifted — and the surface of Galveston was raised, bringing the elevation up to a maximum of twelve feet above sea level. The whole city, upgraded.
But elevation alone wasn't the whole answer. The Gulf still had its waves, and the waves still had their ambitions. So along the shore of the island, they built a solid concrete wall.
The original section, begun in October of 1902, stretched three and a third miles. It stood seventeen feet high, founded on wooden pilings, backed by a sand embankment, and protected out front by stone riprap. And here's the detail that shows you these engineers were thinkin': the Gulf side of the wall curved outward — not straight up and down, but curved — specifically to prevent water from washing over the top.
That's not just engineering. That's an argument with the ocean, and the engineers were determined to win it. The wall was finished in July of 1904.
Then came 1915. A hurricane struck Galveston — one the marker says was more severe than the storm fifteen years before. The seawall had been finished for just over a decade, and now it was being tested by something worse than what it was built to stop.
The damage was far less. Far less. The wall had proved its value, and Galveston had proved something too — that a city can be remade after the worst thing imaginable.
Since then, the wall has been periodically lengthened, growing beyond that original three-point-three miles. And Galveston, freed from the threat of further destruction, has grown into a modern and prosperous city. Six thousand lives lost, and then — a city that refused to be lost with them.
What the marker says
On Sept. 8, 1900 a devastating hurricane and tidal wave destroyed much of Galveston and left 6000 persons dead. After the tragedy, the city appointed a board of three engineers, Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Henry M. Robert (1837-1923), author of "Robert's Rules of Order," Alfred Noble, and H. C. Ripley, to devise protection from future storms. Work on their proposal, to be financed jointly by city, county, and state governments, was started in 1902. To prevent flood damage, buildings were jacked up and the surface of the entire city upgraded, increasing the elevation to a maximum of 12 feet above sea level. As a shield against high waves, a solid concrete wall was built along the Gulf shore of the island. The original section of the seawall, begun in Oct. 1902, stretched 3.3 miles. Founded on wooden pilings, the 17-foot high barrier was backed by a sand embankment and protected in front by stone riprap. The Gulf side of the wall curved outward to prevent water from washing over the top. Finished in July 1904, the seawall proved its value in 1915, when a hurricane more severe than the storm 15 years earlier did far less damage. Since then, the wall has been periodically lengthened. Freed from the threat of further destruction, Galveston has grown into a modern and prosperous city.